


What Comes Next (And How to Like It)

by Likelightinglass



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All The Tropes, Choose Your Own Adventure, Creature Inheritance, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Humor, M/M, Minor Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape, POV Second Person, Reader-Interactive, Severus Snape Lives, Severus Snape deserves to be happy, Severus Snape/Some peace and quiet, Time Travel, all the happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 28,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27751720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likelightinglass/pseuds/Likelightinglass
Summary: A choose your own adventure fic!You are Severus Snape. You survived against all odds, and now it's time to take life into your own hands. What will you do with this gift of a second chance, and how will you find your happy ending?Your happy ending is pretty much always Harry Potter, but there's so many fun ways to get there.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 70
Kudos: 115
Collections: Interactive Fiction/Actual ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’





	1. The first day of the rest of your life

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Choices](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25765213) by [Lizzy0305](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzy0305/pseuds/Lizzy0305). 



> This fic was inspired by the excellent Choices by Lizzy0305. The format is similar, this is a choose your own adventure Snarry fic. Severus Snape deserves a chance at a happy ending, and in this fic, you can give him several. Consider it a bit of Snarry trope sample size speedrun. It's meant to be very fun, and lighthearted, and I don't like unhappy endings, so even the "bad" choices end with hope. 
> 
> At the end of each chapter, you will have a decision to make. Select the appropriate chapter from the drop down, and follow it through the the end. This fic has 18 endings, and I encourage you to try to get to them all! I had so much fun writing this, and I hope you have fun reading it!

The first thing you are aware of when you wake is how _bright_ the world seems. You grasp at foggy memories of where you were last and where you should be. The Dark Lord, Nagini's fangs in your throat, Potter’s green, green eyes--the pieces start coming together as you blink against the intrusive light.

Finally, your memory fills in the cracks and your eyes adjust to the light. You realize you are in a hospital bed. Your neck hurts, you ache all over, and you are incredibly tired, despite having just woken up. You take in a deep breath and try to keep calm. Was Potter able to understand your memories, or had they become garbled and confused? Was the Dark Lord still alive? Was Potter?

As you look around, the answer to one of those questions is right in front of your face. 

There sits Potter, sprawled out on a chair beside your bed. Asleep and unkempt but most assuredly _alive_. He is positioned awkwardly, head pillowed against the wall and neck crinked in a way that makes you hurt just looking at him. His glasses are askew and he is snoring softly. 

All you are certain of right now is that you are alive and Potter is alive. Anything else is speculation. Potter could be keeping you here as a prisoner after his victory over Voldemort, not believing your loyalty to Dumbledore and to Lily’s memory. The Dark Lord could still be at large, and you and Potter are in hiding with other Order members. Or, Potter managed to defeat a maniacal evil Wizard while being said wizard’s Horcrux _without_ dying, and he and the entire Wizarding World regarded you, Severus Snape, a hero. 

Well, probably not that last one, you think.

You listen carefully, take in your surroundings. Despite the perceived brightness of the hospital lights, it’s actually rather dim and seems to be nighttime. As far as you can tell, no one is nearby besides Potter. Your wand is on the bedside table. You quietly attempt to move. You think you can manage to leave the bed without waking the boy if you’re careful. On the other hand, you’re burning to get some answers on what’s going on.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, and the decision is yours. So, what do you do?

If you flee quietly and wish to start a new life, go to Chapter 2

If you wish to be cautious and wait it out, feign sleep in Chapter 5

If you wake Potter up and demand answers, go to Chapter 24


	2. Flee

Since when have answers ever been what you wanted to hear anyway? The fact that you aren’t shackled to the bed and the Dark Mark on your arm is replaced by a scar clues you in enough to know the Dark Lord is gone and no one is at least immediately trying to kill you. The boy in the chair can keep his secrets. 

You quietly remove yourself from the bed. You are sore and shaky but you think you can manage a few spells. You disillusion yourself so as to sneak out of the hospital without anyone noticing you, and once you get past the hospital’s apparition wards you apparate yourself to one of Dumbledore’s safe houses. There, you clean up and rest. After lying low for a couple of weeks and recovering further, you make your way to a Muggle bank. There, you withdraw the emergency savings you had set up with Albus’ help during the war in the form of traveler’s checks, as well as empty out a safe box of a few sentimental items, and Muggle passports and identification. You start a new life and decide to leave the Wizarding World behind.

You start by traveling, first the continent and then further afield. You meet new and interesting people. You take classes in whatever you want, from organic chemistry to yoga to classical music. You learn an instrument, and you learn how to cook interesting and exotic dishes, and you make friends all around the world. After a few years of finally having the freedom to live your life exactly the way you want it, you find a quiet place to settle down.

It’s a small island in the Caribbean, and though it’s mostly inhabited by muggles, a few other magical people who wish to leave behind the magical world have settled there as well over the years, leading to a non-wizarding place to live where you can still practice magic, since no one really cares if you’re a wizard. 

You have a small but serviceable house just a few steps away from the beach and every morning the sunrise over the water streams in through your window, lighting your bedroom in a soft orange glow. The air is fresh, and smells of salt and fruit. You make potions for your neighbors, and once a month or so you take a boat to the nearest city with friends and stock up on any needed supplies. 

Today, you are lying on a hammock in the late afternoon sun, a favorite book open on your chest as you tilt your face up to the sky, eyes closed and soaking in the warmth of the sunlight. Sometimes you find yourself thinking about the world you left behind. News travels, even here, and sometimes the sound of a familiar name makes you pause, reconsider your decision to leave the hospital bed without a word to anyone. Why was Potter there, asleep in the chair next to you? What might he have said, if you’d only stayed?

But sometimes, you don’t regret it at all. Sometimes, the only place you want to be is right here, in your own little piece of paradise. You hear the sound of someone approaching you, then the shadow of a figure next to you. Maybe it’s your neighbor, come to visit. Maybe the boy (man, now, isn’t he?) that you can’t help but think of sometimes has finally tracked you down, to say whatever it was he wanted to say to you those years ago in St. Mungo’s. 

Your life has been so nice lately, so exactly what you want, that you think if you only wish for it hard enough, that when you open your eyes whoever you want it to be standing there will be exactly who it is. 

Who are you hoping is here to visit you?

If it’s your neighbor, bringing fresh banana cake, go to Chapter 3

If it’s The Boy Who Lived, go to Chapter 4


	3. Neighbor

You open your eyes, and it’s exactly what you hoped--your neighbor and friend is here to visit, and she’s brought you a plate of something.

“I made banana cake,” she says, the breeze tousling her long, dark hair. “Are you going to lounge around all day, or are you going to invite me inside so we can eat it?”

“Only if I’m allowed to lounge around after we eat,” you reply, and she laughs at you and rolls her eyes.

You invite her inside and make a pot of coffee to go with the cake. She’s returned from the mainland recently, and brings you some news, both from the muggle world and the magical one. 

She’s a good neighbor to have, rarely bothersome, and a good cook and conversationalist. You chat pleasantly for some time, savoring the rich, strong coffee and the light, sweet taste of the cake. She convinces you to join her at a gathering down the road. Some locals have a steel drum band and are going to perform. There’ll be a barbeque, too, she says, and though you are still a man who prefers his solitude, you give in.

At the party you are greeted warmly, the whole town knows you. You are not universally adored (no place is that far from reality), but you still have a few friends and several friendly acquaintances among the group. You are pulled into a chess game with a man you have something of a rivalry with. As the night goes on you switch to dominoes, then, cards as more people join. The drinks are refreshing and leave you relaxed and happy, the food is delicious and the company is actually quite pleasurable.

The sun sets over the water as music fills the air. Someone starts a large fire and as the night winds down you swap stories over the fire. Maybe you will meet someone special and take them home with you. Maybe you spend the evening with friends and return home to a peaceful house and a warm and welcoming bed. Right now you are happy, there is laughter and joy surrounding you and the sky is full of starlight.

THE END


	4. The Boy Who Lived

And lo and behold, there he is. Harry Potter, looking like the cat that got the canary. He smiles wide.

“You’re a difficult man to find, Snape,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. 

You make no move to get up, just meet his gaze--those eyes still a brilliant green but set in the face of a grown man now. His hair is longer, better managed, and he has a neatly trimmed black beard framing his face. It looks good on him, you think.

All of him looks quite good, actually, you realize as you survey the sight before you. He’s dressed muggle, but not like a tourist. Well-fitting jeans and a snug red shirt that leaves very little of the muscles underneath to the imagination. Potter is all grown up and quite fit. Very good, indeed. 

“And yet,” you say, gesturing between you to emphasize that he’s apparently proven himself up to the task of finding you. “What brings you here?”

For all he’s seemingly searched and traveled, now that he’s finally found you Potter appears to be at a loss for words. You remember a time when you would have greeted him with an insult. But the years have passed and the island life has mellowed you out quite a bit. 

“Oh, come inside,” you say with a put upon sigh, removing yourself from the comfort of the hammock. “Tea? Or coffee?” you ask, leading him inside your home. 

“Uh. Tea?” he says. Whatever he was expecting when he found you, this was apparently not it. You prepare the tea, make up a plate with some fruit and leftover banana cake. He examines the contents of his plate and cup before taking a tentative sip. “I haven’t poisoned you, Potter,” you say with a roll of your eyes. You sit down at the table with him and eye him curiously. “Well? You’ve found me. I imagine you have something of some importance to say? Unless you’re just here to inquire about the best local beaches?”

He furrows his brow and sets the cup down with a clank. “I’m here because you bloody disappeared! No one knew if you were alive or dead!”

“As you can see, I am alive. Your curiosity is sated.”

“Oh, don’t be such a berk. Didn’t you ever consider that it would _matter_ to people if you disappeared? That people might be concerned? Miss you?”

You hadn’t really considered that at all. You’d made so many enemies the last year at Hogwarts, and you hadn’t a friend in the world at the time you should have died. When you woke up, unexpectedly alive, you were certain the wizarding world would have been better off without you. “No, I didn’t,” you say quietly, and something changes in Potter’s face.

“Well,” he starts. “We do. Or at least...I do. I’d been by your bedside for weeks, you know. Waiting for you to wake up.”

“Why?” you ask, entirely befuddled by the concept.

“To talk! After you gave me your memories, it changed everything. I can’t believe--I had to thank you, or apologize, or just--you just left! You were dead, and then you were going to live, and then you were just _gone_ and we never got to...got to talk.” Potter trails off at the end, staring down into his mug of tea. 

“So talk,” you say, softly, still confused but moved by his display of emotion. You can’t imagine why the thorn in your side for years has spent so long tracking you, his hated professor, just to _talk_.

So he does. He tells you about the year hunting Horcruxes, about the doe Patronus in the forest, about what it meant to him--the safety, the peace of it. He talks about the final battle, about going back for you in the Shack afterwards, how terrified he was you were going to die. You feel a lump rising in your throat, a strange knot of guilt settling in your stomach. 

You ask a few questions, finally get your answers. Apparently, there was a trial in your absence, in which Potter defended you, got your name cleared, even awarded an Order of Merlin. He talks about the changes in the Ministry, his friends and what they’re doing now. You ask after a few people, get an update. It’s surreal, that Potter is here, sitting in your kitchen. The thought of your past life comes rushing back, and though you are very happy where you are now, and don’t regret your decision to leave it behind, you do feel some regret over the way in which you left. 

“I have your memories,” he says finally, after you’ve run out of questions. “If you want them back.”

“I don’t know if I do,” you say. It’s been so long without them. You know what’s missing, can feel the shape of it in the empty space in your mind. 

Potter nods, he seems to understand. “Will you tell me about her? My mother?”

It’s your turn to talk now, so you do. You talk about Lily, finally, words you haven’t spoken to anyone before, not really. You talk about meeting for the first time--that’s one of the missing memories, but you’re aware of what happened, have a memory of recounting it excitedly to your mother later that day. You talk about silly games you used to play, how it felt to be a lonely child that finally had a friend. You tell her son about her favorite colors, about nicking sweets from the corner store, about your favorite spot to study at school. As you talk, something eases inside you, a string that had been held taut for so long finally slackens. 

“Were you in love with her?” Harry asks, and he sounds sad, almost wistful.

You consider for a while before you finally speak. “I think so. I certainly thought I did, at the time. I was sixteen when we stopped speaking, and only twenty one when she died. Afterwards, the feelings and the memory and the guilt all tangled together.”

Harry nods and you sit in silence for a few minutes, sipping tea and picking at the food. You don’t know why you’ve revealed all this. Maybe it just feels good to finally talk to someone who knows you. It strikes you, suddenly, that Potter really does know you. Cares about you, at least to some degree, to scour the earth looking for you. You clear your throat, decide to break the silence. “What does your Miss Weasley think of you being here? Or is it Mrs Potter, now?”

His eyebrows went up and he blinked owlishly behind his glasses. “Oh, Ginny and I broke up years ago. There’s no Mrs Potter. Or Mr Potter, either, for that matter. I suppose you didn’t get the Prophet special edition about that?” he says with a chuckle.

Interesting. No, that tidbit had managed to escape your notice. “I did not,” you say, evenly, attempting not to think about potential implications of the fact that Potter apparently was attracted to men as well. Potential implications? What, for you? Unlikely.

In an attempt to save the awkward silence you cast about for something to say, so you mention something meaningless about your time on the island, what you do for a living now. Potter seems interested, actually, and so you show him the small magical garden you keep for ingredients, your small lab built in a shed on the edge of your property. Once you’re already outside, it only makes sense to go further, show him your favorite section of beach. 

And before you know it you’ve walked into town. Some of the locals you’re friendly with wave at you, look at Potter curiously. You ask if he’s hungry, so you take him to a little seafood restaurant you love, get a few tropical drinks and a plate piled high with blackened fish and sweet conch. 

Potter is delighted and eats like he’s never seen food before. You’re amazed how natural the conversation begins to flow between you, how easy it becomes to laugh at his jokes, the warm rush of joy when he grins wide at a comment you make. As the sun starts to set you walk back along the ocean, someone has started playing music nearby, and the whole world seems bright and perfect. Potter sits down on the sand and watches the last rays of sunlight disappear beneath the waves. You seat yourself next to him, and he leans his head on your shoulder. Without thinking you lean closer in against him, and just sit in silence, watching the sunset until the last of the orange light fades away, replaced by a glittering sea of stars. 

Potter turns to look at you, and there is something about his expression that freezes you in place. He leans in closer.

“Potter,” you start, although you have no idea how you intend to finish the weak protest.

“I think,” he says, “that you should call me Harry.”

“Harry, then,” you whisper, and he bridges the distance between you, pressing his lips to yours. 

Kissing Harry Potter on a starlit beach is not a position you ever imagined you’d find yourself in, but right now there is nowhere else you’d rather be. You kiss back, twining your fingers in his hair as he pulls you closer, cups your jaw. 

After several moments he pulls away. “I--I probably shouldn’t have done that. It’s just I finally realized what I’ve been after, trying to find you. What I’ve been wanting, all this time.”

“I thought you wanted to talk,” you reply, still slightly breathless from the intensity of the kiss.

He looks you over, his hand stroking down through your hair, fingertips caressing your scarred throat. “I don’t want to talk,” he says.

“Me neither,” you say. You can think of much more pleasant things than speaking. 

“I’m staying at an inn in town,” he says, making his intentions clear. “But it’s very far away.”

That’s a lie. You live on a tiny island, absolutely nothing is “far away”. But you realize you’re overcome with the desire to see Potter--to see _Harry_ in your house, against your bedsheets, draped in _your_ robe and drinking coffee in your kitchen in the morning. 

“Then we should go back to the house,” you say, and Harry flashes that beautiful smile.

You make your way back to the house in a haze, unable to keep your hands off of each other. Once you are finally inside, you press him against the wall beside the door, lips pressed to his in a heady kiss and you snake your hands under his shirt. He obliges you quickly, pulling it off in one easy motion and baring the smooth, warm skin beneath it. You can’t help but touch, pausing to tweak a nipple and burying your fingers into the dark curls of chest hair as you move to kiss along his jaw and down his neck. 

He unbuttons your trousers and looks at you questioningly. You nod rapidly, and he pulls them down fully, sinks to his knees in front of you and begins nuzzling your cock, already half hard from the touching and kissing. He strokes it until you are fully erect, and you gasp as he takes you into his mouth. 

You twist your fingers into his hair and fight the urge to thrust. You can’t help but moan at the sensation of that wet heat around you. If he keeps this up much longer you aren’t going to last, so you regretfully give a gentle tug to his hair, pulling him off. “Bedroom,” you manage to gasp, and pull him up to his feet. You nearly trip on your way, pulling your feet out of the trousers and pants around your ankles, slipping off your shoes. You help each other out of the rest of your clothes on the way into the bedroom, and you tumble onto the bed, pressing him into the mattress. 

“How do you want me?” Harry whispers, looking at you with an undisguised delight, like you’re a present he can’t wait to unwrap.

“Any way,” you manage to say in between devouring him in more kisses. “Every way,” you say against his throat and he laughs. 

“Want you to fuck me,” he says, and your cock is immediately on board with this suggestion. For all the frantic passion in the time leading up to it, the actual act is rather unhurried. You draw it out, taking his length in your mouth as you stretch him with your fingers, lose yourself in the sound of his pleasured moans and sighs. When you finally push into him it feels like coming home, like all the moments of your life have been leading up to this one, and you pant into the crook of his neck as he rocks against you. You wrap your hand around his cock and stroke him in time to your thrusts until you are both babbling, saying things you surely don’t really mean, lost in the haze of sensation. Your pleasure mounts until you feel him spill over onto your hand, hear him cry out and pull you impossibly closer and you reach your peak, held tight with Harry’s arms and legs wrapped around you. 

You stay like that for a few moments, until the rush of orgasm has passed and your heart beats slow and your breathing starts to settle. You pull apart gently, lie back against the pillows and Harry curls against you, his head on your shoulder. 

“Wow,” Harry says, finally, and you simply nod in agreement. “I’m so glad I found you,” he adds, almost too quiet to hear, and your heart flutters at the emotion in his voice. 

“I’m glad too,” you say, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.

“So are you going to show me the rest of the sights tomorrow?” he asks sleepily, cuddling closer. “You mentioned something about your favorite place to swim?”

“Oh, no, Harry,” you say, and his head snaps up. “I don’t think I’m ever letting you out of this bed.

He just laughs and laughs, a loud, delighted bellow sounding out in the darkness of the bedroom. He rolls his eyes but hardly looks upset about the prospect. “Well, if you insist,” he says finally, and you hold him close, thinking about all the tomorrows ahead of you. 

Together.

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	5. Feign Sleep

You weren’t a spy for years to just start shouting, so you decide to play it safe, and stay quiet. You study the boy in the chair beside you. You haven’t really been able to get a good look at him since the end of sixth year. He’s grown in the past year, taller now. Certainly on the thin side but his shoulders have filled out, and he’s lost the gawky look of a teenager. He’s grown up into a man. You are momentarily uncomfortable when you realize you are staring, thinking about how _good_ he looks, messy hair and five o’clock shadow notwithstanding. 

Best not follow that train of thought.

Instead you consider the lack of a mark on your arm. Not faded, as it had been the first time Voldemort had been “killed” but burned away entirely now, just leaving a scar behind, a discoloration of the skin in the very vague outline of the mark. Well and truly gone this time, then. Something like hope lights up inside you, a forgotten feeling. 

The boy starts to stir and you close your eyes, lean back against the pillow and steady your breathing. You hear him shift in the chair, crack his undoubtedly sore neck and shoulder, and he sighs. You can feel his eyes on you, and in a most unexpected turn of events you feel him touching you. Just the light press of fingertips on the back of your hand. After a moment of you somehow managing to keep still, he grasps your hand properly, holding it in his own. Warmth spreads through you at the contact. You can’t remember the last time someone simply held your hand and the fact that it’s Harry Potter, of all people, is not nearly as disconcerting as it should be. You can’t help but open your eyes.

You also can’t help but smirk when Potter nearly flies out of his chair when he realizes you’re staring at him. 

“Sir! You’re awake!” he shouts, and you wince at the volume. He pulls his hand away from yours like it’s on fire and you feel a pang at the loss of contact. 

“Potter,” you say, and your voice sounds foreign to your ears.

“I’m not sure, if you’re supposed to talk,” Potter says, looking worried. “You’ve been asleep for weeks. We thought you were going to die.”

So did I, you think to yourself. “You were supposed to die, too,” you say, in a tone that came out far more accusatory than you intended. Was Albus wrong then? Or perhaps the Dark Lord was not quite as dead as everyone hoped.

“Oh, I did,” Harry says, and you stare at him blankly.

“Explain, Potter,” you rasp out, since nothing else seems to be forthcoming.

So he does. He starts at the beginning, after the last exchange of note, him screaming at you after the Headmaster’s demise. He talks about Horcruxes, and the forest. He gets almost misty-eyed when he comes to the part about your Patronus guiding him to the lake, and you don’t understand why. He tells you about the battle, the lives lost, and how Voldemort was finally defeated.

He even mentions the dramatic speech about how in love with his mother you apparently were. Is that what the boy managed to take away from the memories? You didn’t think final showdowns between boy heroes and maniacal madmen really lent themselves to long speeches about your supposed love life. You are glad you were unconscious for that, as you are currently trying not to die of embarrassment at the thought that everyone in Hogwarts now thinks they know anything about you. 

You don’t bother making any comment on that, the less spent time talking about Lily, the better. Instead, you ask about more practical matters. Such as whether or not you should expect to be carted off to Azkaban anytime soon.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Potter replies decisively. “There was a trial, but between the memories and Dumbledore’s portrait, your name is entirely cleared. You’ve even got an order of Merlin,” he adds with a grin. 

An Order of Merlin? Your name cleared? And a world with no Dark Lord. No reason to spy, to keep up appearances, to curry favor with influential people anymore. You lean back and stare at the ceiling, digesting this new information. 

“Sir?” Harry says tentatively after several long moments have passed. “The Ministry is cleared out of Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters now, and they’re looking for trustworthy people to help bring things back to rights. Professor McGonagall understands everything now, and I know she could use your help back at the school. Or...well, I suppose you could do anything you want now. What do you want to do when you leave the hospital?”

"None of your business," you tell Potter, because of course it isn't. He has a point though- you're free from the Dark Lord, you have an Order of Merlin and the world is your oyster. You consider your options. Before you were forced into a teaching career, you’d originally had designs on working with the Ministry. Becoming an Unspeakable, perhaps, something with spellcrafting or curse breaking. Or with your Potions Mastery the natural next step would be to own your own apothecary and potions business. Maybe you’ll finally have the time to devote to research. Considering further, Hogwarts _is_ a valid option. It’s been your home for decades now, and it would be a comfortable option to return to the only career you’ve ever had.

Potter is right. You can do absolutely anything now. 

So, what do you want to do with your life?

If you pursue your dream of becoming an Unspeakable, go to Chapter 6

If you decide to open an apothecary, go to Chapter 16

If you decide to return to teaching, go to Chapter 21


	6. Unspeakable

Now it’s time for something completely different, you decide. 

You have no desire to go back to Hogwarts, having spent the better part of twenty years there, trying to force potions knowledge into the brains of hundreds of ungrateful brats. And you’ve had your fill of potions too. You decide to pursue your long-ago dream of becoming an Unspeakable, and you apply for a job in the Department of Mysteries. 

Potter has managed to become an Auror based on fame alone, since apparently NEWT scores aren’t required for boy heroes. Though the Department of Mysteries is not under the direction of the division of magical law enforcement, you begrudgingly acknowledge that the boy’s influence did no small part in getting you this job.

You’d be more bitter about it if you didn’t want it so much. You see Potter from time to time in the halls, and occasionally in the cafeteria, and the brat always wants to check in on you, see how you’re doing. It’s getting a bit tiresome, but it’s hardly unbearable.

All in all, you enjoy your new job. Not only are you actually surrounded by adults all day (and competent ones at that), you finally get to spend the day doing what you love--magical research, and creating new spells. The fact that you can’t speak to anyone about your work doesn’t bother you, it’s not as if you have much of a social life anyway. You arrive at the Department of Mysteries every morning, exchange a few polite words with colleagues, and you lose yourself in ancient tomes of knowledge every day, taking copious notes and unlocking the mysteries of magic. It’s a pleasant life, and you’re glad you’ve chosen it. 

One day, you find yourself alone in the Time Chamber. The Time Turners have all been destroyed, at least as far as you were aware, and your colleagues here are working with something specific to time travel. Right now, everyone is out to lunch, and you are only here to look for a reference book for your own project. 

But there’s an object on the counter, made of brass and shaped like a miniature Pensieve. Something about it draws you closer and in the misty surface you see an image. It’s the lakeside at Hogwarts on a sunny day. There’s a small figure, reading under a tree and two other figures approach…

It hits you. This is the day everything got worse. When you called Lily a Mudblood, destroying your friendship forever, when you were humiliated in front of your classmates. The day that directly cemented your path to becoming a Death Eater, and all the terrible things that followed. You pick up the device, tempted, and the image becomes even clearer. 

You can feel that if you just put your fingertips against the scene playing out before you, pushing in like breaking the surface of a lake, you’d be back there, on that day, and you’d be able to change things.

If you could undo your worst mistake, would you do it? Or should you focus on the future instead? 

To change the past, go to Chapter 7

To put it down and walk away, go to Chapter 12


	7. Change the past

The temptation of changing your past is simply too great to ignore. As soon as your skin touches the surface of the device you feel as if you are being pulled in. A few painful and disorienting seconds later you find yourself sitting on the grass. You look down and see you are in the body of your teenage self, hand me down trousers too short and exposing your ankles, ratty old robes nearly coming apart at the seams gathered in the grass around you.

You know enough about time magic to understand what it is you’ve done. There’s no going back, you have no device to return to the future. For better or for worse, here you are now, in the body of your sixteen year old self. 

Approaching from your side are two boys in Gryffindor robes. James Potter and Sirius Black. You know what happens next. You don’t have very long to decide how to proceed, or think about the potential consequences of what you change. 

Or maybe you shouldn’t have messed with the past at all, maybe you should change nothing, and let history play out the way it always has. It would be safer that way, wouldn’t it? Reading a story you already know the ending to?

Call Lily a Mudblood and live the same life you've lived before, go to Chapter 8

Do something else, go to Chapter 9


	8. Call Lily a Mudblood

Really? You have the once in a lifetime opportunity to change the future and you decide to do exactly the same thing? 

Well, that's your choice.

And it's a choice you keep making, not only in that one instance but every day, again and again. It’s better this way, you decide, as you repeat the same mistakes you had before, at least you know where it’s going to end up. You haven’t introduced any new variables and at least the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, right?

You take what comfort you can in playing out your life like an actor in a performance, one who’s rehearsed every line. You see things in people you didn’t before, gain a better understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes, now that you are not so preoccupied with the direction your own life will take--you already know. 

You observe Potter more, too. He’s really not very much like his father, is he? Not arrogant, not a bully. There’s a stubbornness to him certainly, but also a quiet kindness, a good heart. You distantly recall the sight of him curled up on the chair beside you, all those years ago. Or, you suppose, not so very long into the future.

You play your role as Headmaster. You speak with the Dark Lord in the Shrieking Shack, plead to go find Potter though you know he is close by. There’s the snake, the bright burst of pain, and moments later green eyes appear before you. You bleed out memories, say “look at me...”

It goes dark, but the hope that you will survive, just like you did the last time gets you through the horror of bleeding out alone on the floor of the shack. You’ve done it all over again, and now you’ll have another chance.

Will you take your future in your hands, and make a different choice when you wake up?

If so, return to Chapter One.

Otherwise, THE END


	9. Do something else

Of course you’re going to do something else. What’s the point of being sixteen again if you don’t get to actually fix things?

Potter and Black start with their grandstanding and a small crowd starts to form. But they aren’t about to watch Snivellous get picked on, not _again_. You use your twenty extra years of dueling prowess and magical knowledge to fire back spells so quick that Black’s hair is lime green and Potter’s sporting a beak before either of them can get the first syllable of “stupefy” out.

Childish spells, perhaps, but you’ve no need to ruin your life yet again by unleashing any Death Eater specialty curses on school grounds.

A double strength expelliarmus disarms them both and the crowd around you starts laughing. The familiar mortification at the sound starts to boil over in your stomach, until you realize that for once they aren’t laughing at _you_.

A quick Levicorpus strings them both upside down and you ponder for a moment what to do with them as Black starts hurling insults and Potter makes several undignified squawks.

Lupin and Lily rush over as you mull over the novel sensation of being the one in power in this scenario.

“Put them down, Snape, before I take points!” Lupin says, eyes darting back and forth between you and his outraged friends. Oh, look who’s suddenly remembered their Prefect responsibilities. Funny how he was rendered temporarily blind and deaf when this scenario was playing out the first time.

“Points?” shouts Black, still wriggling against the conjured restraints. “That’s the least of your worries, you greasy, snivelling--” You cast Silencio on Black, since his insults have become repetitive anyway. 

Lily looks like she can’t decide whether to be angry with you or impressed. You see a small smile tug at her lips. You give Potter a pair of rabbit ears on a whim and watch the smile spill over into a laugh. “Severus, put them down!”

“Why should I?” you ask. “What do you think they’d have done to me, if they’d been faster?” you say, unable to quite keep years of bitterness out of your tone. You know _exactly_ what they’d have done. 

“You’re right,” Lily says, which surprises you. You turn to look at her, confused, and note the odd gleam in her eye. “Toss them in the lake, then.”

“You’ve got a wand too, don’t you?”

She purses her lips and it’s suddenly last summer, you daring her to nick something silly from the shop in Cokeworth, and her rising to the challenge.

So she does, she levitates them over to the Black Lake, just beyond the shore, and releases the charm, dumping them unceremoniously into the water and the two of you dissolve into laughter. The rest of the crowd joins and then disperses, and you and Lily run back to the castle before they can swim ashore.

“Where did that come from?” Lily says with a laugh, and it hits you how much you’ve missed her. 

Well, it’s the end of your fifth year and here you are back in your sixteen your old body. You’ve managed to change your worst memory, and you haven’t lost her, not yet. Time magic doesn’t like being out of order, and now that the adrenaline of the last several minutes have passed, you can feel it pricking at your memories of the future. It starts to fade like the after effects of a dream, and you know if you fought against it, you could retain your future self. 

But then you’d be twenty years older, mentally, and full of the memories of grief and anger and loneliness. You’d have the benefit of experience, though. Honestly, you could run the Wizarding World yourself if you had the mind to.

Well, it’s the first day of the rest of your life, yet again. What do you think?

Take the true second chance, and live the life you wanted at sixteen, go to Chapter 10

Nah, you’re better than this. You're too good for Hogwarts and all the people in it. Take advantage of the opportunity, and go to Chapter 11


	10. Sixteen years old: Part 2

You don’t want to be the man you were anymore. Well, will be. Could be? Oh, it doesn’t matter. The confusing tenses with which you think about your past and future self will be settled soon enough.

But, let's be honest. There’s no sense in letting all that knowledge go to waste, especially when you can save so many people. 

“I need to talk to the Headmaster,” you say, and Lily is very confused. 

“But, Sev--”

“Meet me in the library? After dinner?” you say, already turning to wind your way through the castle and up to his office. 

To say Dumbledore is surprised to see you is an understatement. You forgot that by this point the two of you have barely exchanged a dozen words to each other. In fact, come to think of it, all of those words have been a variant on “detention” when things with Potter and Black had escalated to beyond what Slughorn and McGonagall wanted to deal with.

But never mind that now. You get his attention by naming off a few things you only learned from your long friendship with the man, then explain the situation.

“Well, my boy,” he says. “That is quite the story.”

He probably doesn’t believe you. But when you start talking about the locations of Tom Riddle’s known Horcruxes, well that certainly gets his attention. You have to all but draw him a bloody map, but he agrees to pass this information on to the “proper authorities”, which you assume means him. At the end of your bizarre infodump on the future and everything that happens in it (you’re actually glad now, that you read Potter’s entire Auror debrief in your Unspeakable training. For intellectual curiosity, of course), you bid the Headmaster a good day, tell him you likely won’t remember any of this tomorrow, and to please not bring it up. And also you have no idea how Potter and Black may or may not have ended up in the lake. 

You know the specifics of life as your older self will start fading, now that you are no longer fighting to keep them. So you detour back to your old Slytherin dorm, after an embarrassing attempt to waltz into your old quarters, now Slughorn’s. There, you find a blank notebook and write down a few things you think might be helpful, including some dirt on your schoolmates you only found out years later, and a few muggle businesses you know will be taking off soon. Might as well make a few sound financial investments while you’re at it.

You can feel the old memories blur and melt to the back of your mind. Enough of the sense of them still shines through, enough that you at least know you won’t be becoming a Death Eater, won’t go off and do any of the stupid things that ruined your life the first time. In turn the more “recent” memories become clearer, sharper. You remember who you’ve spoken with the past week, remember you’ve got your last OWL coming up tomorrow. 

You meet Lily after dinner, in the library, like you said. She’s still a bit perplexed, but she’s there, she’s your best friend and you tell her you’re sorry if you’ve been odd today, but things have been hard for you in Slytherin lately, and you’re fed up with Potter and his cronies, and how much you like her, and don’t ever want to lose her friendship. She blushes at your intensity, or maybe just your honesty. You’re more self aware now, you find, than you’ve been in a very long time.

She’s honest with you too, in turn, how nervous she’s been about the blood purity, your schoolmates, how she feels like she’s been losing you too. It’s getting close to curfew now, and it’s dark and then she does the unthinkable, and she kisses you.

It’s your first kiss, and you’d dreamt it would be her ever since you first thought about kissing as something you might like to try one day and any thought in your head beyond being young and foolish and snogging in the library has completely gone out of your head the moment her soft lips press against yours. 

And whatever happens next, wherever the two of you go from here, and whatever it is you do with your life you don’t know. 

But you know you are pretty excited to find out.

THE END


	11. You're too good for this place

You survived what you had never expected to survive, were put in the position to actually travel back in time, and you’ve already changed the outcome of your worst memory.

Go big or go home, I say.

“You know, you haven’t been a very good friend,” you tell Lily and her bright green eyes go wide as saucers.

“What?” she asks, and you realize that what you’ve said is really quite true.

Looking back on your years at Hogwarts as an adult, you’d started drifting apart after you were both sorted. You were always a bit too dark, a bit too weird, and a bit too clingy for Lily after she found herself accepted by her peers in a way you never were. 

But you don’t need her. You don’t need anyone at all, actually, you are a thirty eight year old triple agent spy and a potions and dark arts master and you have a chance to do it all the right way. 

So you leave her there and go back to your dorm. 

You start to write down a plan. 

You know what happened during the first and second wars, having combed through all the records during your Unspeakable training. You know about the Horcruxes, where they are (or will be) and how to destroy them.

You know you’re clever, and you have something your sixteen year old self never did--decades of practice pretending to be something you’re not. So you take the summer and build connections. You meet Riddle at Abraxas Malfoy’s Solstice party, as you did before, and you are exactly the right amount of meek and impressed. You buddy up to influential Slytherins, using your knowledge of them gleaned in the future to smooth the way for building the relationships now. 

You quietly invest in muggle companies you know will be doing well soon, amassing wealth to help back your credibility. When you’ve cemented yourself as a right hand to the up and coming Dark Lord, you get yourself named heir apparent, locate and destroy his Horcruxes, and then simply dispatch him.

The old man was insane anyway, and your new order will be a sensible one.  
You’ve no desire to unleash the likes of Bellatrix on the unsuspecting Muggle population, so you divert your more...enthusiastic followers to strong arming each other into social reform that actually matters. You embrace your half blood status and while you can’t say your overtaking the Ministry and the Hogwarts curriculum are entirely light and benign in nature, neither are they the torturous dictatorship mad old Voldemort was leading all those years from now.

Lily marries James Potter, and they are still part of Dumbledore’s little revolt against you, unable to see that just because something is Dark, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. All people who don’t know how bad the world can really be, how greatly your plans to reform and reinvent wizarding society will change life for the better. The more powerful you are, the further you get from the person you used to be, and you consider that a success. What were you before, just angry, and lonely, and bitter. Living in guilt, in debt  
But not anymore. You call the shots now, you’re wealthy beyond imagination, and you’ve hardened your heart so need to worry about the loneliness creeping in.

Since there’s no rampant murder and torture under you, the new Dark Lord, Dumbledore’s order has little to really complain about. Mistakes do happen, you certainly can’t control all of your followers, but you are doing better, aren’t you? Now that people are finally listening to you, now that they respect you, and you aren’t just stuck in between two Masters. Who cares that you inspire fear more than love? You were never going to be loved, but at least you can live a life with purpose, with _respect_.

There’s a prophecy about defeating you, of course there is.

Born as the seventh month dies, to those who’ve thrice defied you.

Harry Potter, of course. You do suppose the Longbottom boy also fits the bill, but there’s a certain poetry to it being Lily’s boy in this universe as well, isn’t it?

Able to conquer the Dark Lord, with power you know not.

What was that power the last time anyway? You’d read a few theories, Lily’s protection of the boy seeming to be the most likely. Well you can avoid that, this time. Simply don’t kill him, don’t set off the chain of events that will lead to your own demise. Merlin, you’ve read a Greek tragedy or two, you know how these things go. Avoid the problem, and the problem goes away.

You’ve done that before.

But you keep an eye on the boy, from afar. Out of curiosity mostly. How will he be different from the one you knew before, who gave you several stress induced ulcers trying to keep him alive in that other universe? 

You gain more power, and more wealth, and the boy grows up. 

You spend more time alone, in your castle, bored out of your mind and surrounded by yes men. You’re the de facto Minister, but you delegate most of the tasks. You have more money now than you know what to do with, and you fill your rooms with Dark artefacts and curiosities, and lose yourself into magical research. 

You still have a persona to maintain, the Dark Lord was a title that stuck twenty years ago, and there’s no getting rid of it now. You lean into it, wearing black, staying stern and unemotional at various events. You let no one near you, and everyone is too off put and afraid of you to try very hard anyway. 

Until one day, Harry Potter shows up for dinner.

No one knows this is the one prophesied to defeat you. And he doesn’t look like someone who’s ready to “conquer the Dark Lord” anyway. He just looks like a young man, barely out of Hogwarts, and he’s suddenly here requesting an audience. 

“My Lord,” he squeaks out, after you gesture for him to be brought up. “I’ve applied for a Defensive Magic Mastery. And I’m writing my thesis about you. I was wondering if you could grant me an interview?”

The neverending, boring days suddenly have a spark of interest in them. “Why me, Mr. Potter?”

“Because you’re the greatest Dark Arts Master of the age. I read your textbook, of course, all the students have to, but the annotated version, with the notes in the margins? It’s what made me want to pursue a mastery.”

“This is bold, Mr. Potter,” you say, and you wonder for a moment if perhaps he has been training to kill you all this time, and this is just some elaborate ruse. “Surely there’s a biography or two available that you can base your research off of? Why should you want to talk to me personally?”

He hesitates for a moment. “Because you fascinate me,” he finally says after a long pause.

“What would your parents think, Mr. Potter?”

He gives a smile. “I’ve found my parents can be a bit...small minded, sir. I hope you won’t be upset to learn they don’t know I’m here.”

Curiouser and curiouser. The boy intrigues you. You’ve kept tabs on him, his interests and studies. He’s still a bit too reckless for his own good, but he’s grown up to be quite clever, by all accounts. Quite handsome too, if you’re being honest. An athletic build, dark hair, shining green eyes.

“Stay for dinner,” you say, more for the novelty than anything else. “If I find you fascinate me, perhaps you can put yourself to good use.

He does fascinate you. He is charming, and funny, and quite enthusiastic about your approach to magical study, which impresses you. You talk for hours, and finally, dessert and coffee and brandy all long finished, you invite him to stay.

To stay and help catalogue artifacts of course. His payment for being granted access to you for his thesis is to help inventory the mass of magical items you’ve collected over the years. 

Harry becomes the brightest thing about your dull life very quickly. 

He loves everything you show him, he asks interesting questions. He gets to know you in a way no one has ever tried to get to know you before. 

You find your Dark Lord persona begins to slip a little more each time you see his smiling face, or his cheeky wink. He makes you laugh one day, genuinely laugh, and you stop short halfway through it, you’re so surprised to hear it. Harry is surprised too, and then pleased. Then blushes in an infuriatingly attractive way. 

Long days of work often end in your study. Sharing a drink and staring off into the fire, chatting amiably. Sometimes he sits just a bit too close, and your heart flutters. An almost forgotten memory creeps up into your awareness, of a sleeping boy strewn over a chair by your bedside, waiting for you to wake up.

Sometimes far too close, you can feel the warmth of his arm against your sleeve, the spicy scent of the alcohol carried on his hot breath only inches away from you, if you leaned in just a bit closer…

Don’t be ridiculous. You’re overthinking things.

And besides there is that prophecy to consider. You are the Dark Lord. Harry Potter has power you know not, doesn’t he? And he’s meant to conquer you.

You’re not sure what this power could be. The boy is clever, and skilled. You’ve sparred a bit with dueling techniques, and though he’s more formidable than you would have expected, you’ve yet to uncover any _power you know not_. 

Until one ordinary night, perhaps a Tuesday, after months of living under the same roof, of weeks spent almost solely in each other’s company, until you realize Harry Potter might know you as well as anyone ever has, and is ever likely to.

You ask him again, why it is he sought you out. Why he wanted to meet you, when he could have simply read about you in a book.

He hesitates again, so much longer than when you asked him before you think he might not answer you.

But then he looks at you, an intensity in those green eyes you haven’t quite seen before. 

“When I’ve seen you before at events, or public appearances, you seemed so...detached. Almost sad. And I thought, how can someone so brilliant, so clever and powerful be sad. And I thought that maybe, maybe you were lonely.”

This was not an answer you expected to hear. You furrow your brow. Was this all based on pity then?

“And what have you found?” you say coldly, pulling back from him.

But Harry just leans in closer.”That you’re even more brilliant than I thought. That you’re different than my parents made me believe. You aren’t evil, you’re clever and wonderful. And I--I…”

He trails off, but his gaze doesn’t waver. You hold your breath, you try to look stoic, but that prophecy comes back into your mind. Power you know not. Conqueror of the Dark Lord. 

“I love you,” he says simply, and it all falls into place. Harry’s brought love into a home where there was none, brought love to a heart that hasn’t felt it in as long as you can remember. 

That’s a power you certainly know nothing about.

You start to breathe again, but it’s no use, because that’s when Harry moves in even closer and captures your lips with his. 

Harry loves you, he kisses you and kisses you and kisses you, and you, the Dark Lord, are thoroughly conquered.

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	12. Put it down and walk away

Oh, no, not today. 

You’ve made enough rash decisions throughout your life to know you have no interest in messing around with time. You put the time turner back down and walk away before the temptation can get the better of you.

The rest of the day goes mostly smoothly. You’re in the restricted section of the restricted library doing some research for your next project. It never fails to delight you, having access to this much knowledge, to be surrounded by old tomes you need to wear special gloves just to handle. Every day has been more fascinating than the last in this new career, and you’re so glad you have the opportunity. You don’t miss teaching at all. You don’t miss the monotonous lectures, you don’t miss the dunderheaded students, you don’t miss--

“Have you heard what happened to Harry Potter?” your colleague asks, interrupting what used to be a nice and peaceful day.

You certainly don’t miss _that_ either, a colleague telling you about the new and exciting adventures of the bane of your existence.

“What’s bloody happened to him, now?” you ask Stevenson, instead of “get out, I don’t care.” Because you do care, of course. 

“Some weird disease, apparently,” Stevenson replies. He sets down a copy of the Daily Prophet he’d had tucked under one arm. “Or a curse. The paper just says he’s under observation at St. Mungo’s, but according to my sister--she’s the head of the Janus Thickey ward, remember? Anyway, according to her, they can’t make heads or tails of it. One day he’s fine, the next he’s covered in spots and wasting away.”

You take the paper, read through it, though it provides precious little information.

You think about it all evening, and then you apparate to St. Mungo’s yourself. It’s the middle of the night, so no one is there visiting. You declare yourself there on Unspeakable business, which isn’t precisely true, but what would the orderly know anyway. Harry’s kept in quarantine, so you watch him through the window. He’s covered in purple and green spots and lesions, he looks weak and frail, his breathing is ragged. 

Fine one day, and then this the next?

Something about the shape of the spots is familiar to you, and you frown, trying to remember...something you came across in your research perhaps, in training.

Then it hits you. Of course. Leave it to Potter to suddenly come down with that sort of magical malady.

If it’s what you’re thinking of, it’s very rare indeed. And a very difficult and complicated cure.

Well, you do have options. You can do absolutely nothing at all. Potter will continue to wilt until he fades away entirely. He’ll have a week to live, maybe two.

IF you do decide to help, there’s no reason you need to do so personally. You can anonymously tell someone else where to look for the cure. They can be the hero, and the boy who lived twice can be the boy who lived thrice.

Or you can do what you do best, and save him yourself. 

Ignore the issue, tell no one and let Potter die, Chapter 13

Decide to help personally, Chapter 14

Tell a colleague, and let someone else do it while you watch from the sidelines, Chapter 15


	13. Let him die

Yeah, I don't think so. 

You're telling me that you have spied, and lied, and put yourself in mortal danger time and time again, all to keep Lily Potter's son safe? And now you're just….over it? You're done now, just ready to let Potter suffer and die when you know you can help?

Not gonna happen, buddy. Go back to chapter twelve and make a choice that isn't stupid.


	14. Help him personally

You’re going to help him. Of course, you are going to help him. You go back to the library at work and start research right away. 

The disease is so rare it doesn’t even have a name, but the symptoms are a perfect match. You made sure to duplicate Potter’s chart so you knew exactly what you were working with. The only known instances have been the result of manipulated dark soul magic, which is why Potter was affected by it. Though Potter is the only documented case of a living Horcrux, soul bonds of a dark nature have existed throughout time, and the sudden breaking or removal of soul bonded magic creates an emptiness. And magic, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

Potter was likely feeling a sense of general illness and malaise for months now, but would he have told anyone? Of course not. Not the boy hero. Over the past several months, once the piece of the Dark Lord’s soul had been extinguished from Potter’s body and magic, the disease would have taken root. 

And now, it’s taken over.

There was, surprisingly, a cure. A potion, as it happened, because of course it would be a potion. The ingredients were not even overly difficult to obtain. It was a complicated brew, but well within your skills. It would take about three days, but that should be soon enough.

No, the difficult part was that in order to replace the empty space where the Horcrux had been, it required the brewer to put a bit of soul into the cure, and create a new bond.

Nothing so dark as a Horcrux, thankfully, but it would require sacrifice. A sacrifice of the brewers time and sleep, as the brew must be constantly monitored. A sacrifice of the brewers mind, since it required personal memories--complete memories, no residue left behind like with removal for a pensieve. And a sacrifice of the brewer’s magic. Not permanently, but with the amount required for the potion to be properly infused, it would be weeks, perhaps months until you were able to recover your use of magic completely.

And the brewer had to truly care for the recipient, enough to warrant doing all of that. You suppose if you were willing to do it, which you were, there’d be no question that you did care for him.

You do it. Of course you do. You start immediately. You tell only the Healer in charge of the case what you intend to do and swear him to secrecy, he will never tell Potter. Especially since he will end up bonded to you and there’s no possible way he’d want to know that. At least there won’t be any long term effects from it, he will never have to know, never have to see you if he doesn’t want to. Because why would he want to? He has his own life, and friends, and family.

You brew the potion for three days, do everything you need to, infuse it periodically with your magic. Each day you must select a memory to lose, something meaningful to you. You’ve given him memories before, so now shouldn’t feel any different. You don’t even really feel the loss, don’t remember what you’ve given up. Whatever it was is worth it. 

The potion is handed over to the Healer, who delivers it immediately. You stay long enough to see the spots fade, the color comes back to his face, his breathing grows less labored. You leave as soon as he wakes up, but before he knows you’re there, and you sleep for a day.

You think that’s going to be the end of it--the newspaper announces he is mysteriously cured, the Healer took a vow to tell no one, the boy gets to live, and you get to continue in quiet obscurity. 

But it’s never that simple. 

Potter shows up not even a week after being discharged, pounding on your door. You swing it open, and he just waltzes right in without a greeting.

“I know what you did,” he says without ceremony.

You survey him for a moment, deciding whether or not to plead ignorance. 

“You don’t think soul bonding with me is going to leave any residue in my head? Your memories, your magic, your...your feelings. They were in my head as soon as I woke up.”

You frown. “That wasn’t...I do apologize, Potter. You weren’t meant to know.”

“Why wouldn’t you want me to know?” he says, aghast. “Know that you saved my life? Know that you...that you care about me enough to do what you did. Hermione figured out what was wrong with me, based on what you gave me. She told me what went into the potion.”

You look down, uncomfortable at the change of tone .”Yes, well. You needn’t have anything to do with me. The bond is complete.”

“You’re crazy if you think I’m walking out of here. If we’re bonded, aren’t we basically married?” he asks, suddenly thoughtful. 

“No,” you reply firmly. “Why would we ever be married?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Harry says. “Maybe because I’ve had a crush on you since sixth year, I’ve been in love with you since you almost died, and you clearly care enough about me to sacrifice so much to save my life?”

This is not what you expected to hear.

“No,” you reply again, less firmly, because you aren’t sure how to possibly reply to any of that. 

Harry comes closer, and smiles. “I’d...I’d like to be married. If you’ll have me.”

“If _I’ll_ have _you_?” you reply, incredulous.

You stand staring at each other for a moment. Harry is impossibly close, and then he leans in to kiss you. It’s a sweet kiss at first, tender and soft. You kiss back, more intensely, and pull him closer to you. The kisses become more heated, and he starts trailing them along your jaw, twisting his fingers in your hair as you’re backed up against the wall.

“If we’re married,” he murmurs, “we should have a wedding night.”

Well, there’s no arguing with that logic. When did Harry Potter become so wise and profound?

You make your way to your bedroom, losing bits of clothing on your way there, and Harry’s mouth barely ever leaves your skin. Before you know it, you’re laid out on the bed, pulling him closer to you, your hands trying to touch every part of his heated body at once.

“This is okay?” he asks, panting, when you pull apart for a moment to take a breath. “I want you, want you so much, but if it’s too fast--”

“It’s not too fast,” you reply hurriedly. “I still think this might be a dream,” you add, because you are too dazed to think straight, and Harry just laughs, sweet and gentle.

You kiss some more, a lot more, and gentle touches turn more forceful, as if you can’t be as close as you want to be, as if you want to press your skin so tightly together you can’t tell where one of you ends and the other begins. It’s a bit awkward, and you both have all the finesse of two teenagers rutting together in a forgotten broom closet, but what you both lack in skill you make up for in passion, and Harry keeps talking, saying silly things, nonsense things, and terms of endearment, and he grabs hold of where you are impossibly hard and aching and touches you just right, perfectly, and before you can form a coherent thought you’re coming over both of you. 

You finish him off just afterwards, savoring the pleasured moan he all but sings into your ear, and the two of you flop back on the bed, panting and spent.

“Well. That was. Unexpected,” you say haltingly, still waiting to wake up alone after this hallucination.

“I thought it was brilliant,” Harry says with a smile. He spells you both clean, then snuggles up against you for a cuddle. “I like being married,” he says casually.

“We aren’t married,” you reply, because you aren’t. Well, not technically. There wasn’t a ceremony, and you didn’t file for a licence, and...oh. You’re married. You’re married to Harry Potter, and he’s going to want some awful ceremony for the Weasley’s, and he’s going to live with you and he’s…

And if he’s going to smile at you like that, and playfully nip your shoulder, and fill your drab, empty room with his light and warmth and love, then you might just be the luckiest man alive, and you should shut up and let him plan whatever ceremony he wants. 

“Do you know what memories you gave me?” Harry asked after a while of comfortable silence. 

“No,” you answer. “Not even the ghost of them. Were they interesting?”

“You might need one back,” Harry says softly. “It’s your happiest. You gave me the memory you use to cast a Patronus. I can feel the strength of it.”

You look at him, amused, and he just leans against you closer, brilliant green eyes soft and lovely, and the light from the afternoon sun billowed around him like a halo.

“I won’t be needing whatever that was anymore,” you say. “I think I’ve just made a new one.”

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	15. Tell someone else

You’re going to help him, of course. But why should it have to be you? There are plenty of capable potioneers, and capable Healers. 

They just needed to be pointed in the right direction, that’s all. And someone else would take it from there.

You go back to the Ministry library and do your research, confirm your suspicions. The disease is so rare it doesn’t have a name, but it has to do with the lack of soul magic. When the Horcrux inside Harry was destroyed it created an empty space in Harry’s magic, letting the disease take root and then overpower him. 

You bring your research and the instructions for the cure to the Healer in charge of Harry’s case. You swear him to secrecy. Let him take the credit for discovering the miracle cure. You really don’t care, as long as he gets better. No one can know. 

You monitor his progress. The Granger girl, of all people, offers to help with the brew. The various friends and family all contribute some of their devotion, their magic, their expertise in order to help Harry get better. The potion is finished, Harry takes it, and he survives.  
You go back to work.

You keep working, and Harry keeps surviving. He’s in and out of hospital for various bumps and bruises, a curse here and there, and he keeps surviving. 

You switch your research to the medical field, becoming St. Mungo’s resident Unspeakable. That might have something to do with Harry’s continued surviving. Your work, it seems, will never end. 

There’s a new branch of the hospital opening, and the board has thrown a gala in honor of the dedication. Everyone who’s anyone is there, and so of course you run into Harry Potter. 

Quite literally run into him, as it appears those Auror honed reflexes mean nothing when he’s making a beeline for the buffet and you are standing in his way.

“Sorry, Sir!” Harry says, red as a tomato. He moves to adjust your robe but a raised eyebrow from you dissuades him. “Err, sorry,” he says again. He clears his throat, not leaving, though you still haven’t addressed him.

“How have you been, sir?” he asks. “I haven’t seen you around the Ministry lately.”

“My work typically brings me here, these days,” you say. “Thus why I am gracing Wizarding society with my presence.”

Harry laughs, although you don’t think you were particularly funny. 

“Hey, let me buy you a drink,” he says.

“Auror Potter, this is an open bar.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll buy you two,” he says with a smile.

You smirk, although that wasn’t particularly funny either. 

Before you know it you’re being led over to the bar. Potter orders your request, very gentleman like, and before you know it you’re actually having a conversation. 

“I heard you were ill,” you say as nonchalantly as you can manage when the conversation begins to wane. “I trust you’ve recovered.”’

“I have,” he says. “It was all very mysterious. Apparently no one in the hospital could figure out what was wrong with me. Until the Healer in charge managed to come across this obscure disease in some book no one’s ever heard of.”

“Did he? That’s fortunate.”

“Very,” Harry says, though something seems off about his tone. “In fact, Hermione says the only place she could imagine something like that would be is in one of those special libraries only Unspeakables can access.”

You take a sip of your drink. You meet his gaze, daring him to continue. “That’s interesting.”

He looks at you a moment longer, then just shakes his head. “Yeah. I thought so too.”

You observe each other for a moment longer, taking a long sip, and then scanning the crowd, pretending to be very interested in the party.

“They never serve enough food at these things,” Harry remarks casually. “In fact, once I’m sick of this party in oh...twenty minutes or so, I think I’ll go to a restaurant.”

“Not a good enough spread for you here, Potter?” you ask. Why is he telling you this?

“Not as good as this Muggle Indian place I found. Do you like Indian food?”

“Occasionally,” you reply cautiously.

“There’s a great little place with a red door, about a block east of the Muggle entrance to the hospital. Can’t miss it. I think that’s where I’ll go tonight.” He _winks_ , actually winks at you and then moves along.

What was that about? Was he actually asking you to dinner?

Well, you could stay here at this boring party surrounded by people you can’t stand. 

But why not take a chance on a more interesting choice tonight? 

Life is, after all, what you make it. So make it a good one.

THE END


	16. Open an apothecary

You knew you were a successful potions master, among the youngest ever to complete their mastery. And despite the overwhelming amount of dunderheads you had taking up valuable space in your classroom every year, you know you were generally a successful teacher, with OWL and NEWT scores at a higher standard than in the past several decades at Hogwarts.

But your professional career had never really filled you with _pride_. At least not the way you felt proud now, looking around the tidy apothecary you’d just finished setting up. You walk around for a moment, straightening jars on the shelves and running your fingers along the edge of the countertop towards the back, space for the till and tidy display of ready-made potions.

Your own business! Finally, and it really was a dream come true. Everything was all ready for your grand opening tomorrow. You smile softly, mentally calculating sales, hours of work needed to keep up with demand. The location in Hogsmeade could lend itself to part-time labor from one of the brighter seventh years, if need be. For extra stock help, or perhaps someone friendlier than you to man the register…

Your musings are interrupted by a rap at the door and your hint of a smile darkens into a frown. 

Who could it be at this hour? There was a clear “closed” sign posted on the door, and helpful hours of operation displayed directly underneath. You try to ignore, but the rapping just gets more insistent. 

You grumble to yourself a moment, but finally give in, swinging the door open. “What?” you snap at the smiling face of none other than Harry Potter.

He ignores you and squeezes his way in. “Wow, sir, it looks great! All ready for tomorrow?”

You choose not to remark on the compliment. “I was, until I lost my train of thought.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” Harry says, although he does not sound sorry at all. “Do I really distract you that much?” he adds cheekily, and you roll your eyes.

You glance at the paper bag he’s brought with him. “I’ll forgive you if that’s for me,” you say, as magnanimously as you can manage. 

Harry just laughs and unpacks way more Chinese takeaway than is appropriate for two people. “I thought you might be busy the first few days and forget to eat. This will reheat well if you don’t have time to cook.”

The thoughtfulness burns you for a moment, you are so unused to the feeling. And _thoughtful_ is never something you’d have expected from Harry, given his parentage, but there it was all the same. 

Ever since the day you woke, inexplicably still alive, Harry has been there. He kept coming by to visit you and then helped when you never asked for help and was kind and funny and clever and attractive when you didn’t want him to be any of those things either.

Best stop wanting things you’ll never have, Severus. 

You turn your attention to the food and eat, and chat, and watch Harry insist on a different order to a display to make it more “eye-catching”. The only thing eye-catching is the way Harry’s jumper pulls up, exposing dark hair and taut muscles around his navel as he reaches up to shift a few bottles around. You turn your head before he can catch you looking and become very interested in spearing a piece of broccoli with your chopsticks instead. 

He bids you good night, eventually, and vows to come back and check on how things are going in a few days.

And things go very well. 

The shop takes off and you are busier than ever. Sales that come in are more than enough to keep up with rent on the storefront, restocking ingredients, and providing you a decent sum to live on. You hire additional help, and they are not unbearable to be around. And Harry comes back, he brings you food, he talks about his Healer apprenticeship, his friends, the general goings-on of the wizarding world. When he invites himself over for tea he remembers how you take it, he brings your favorite biscuits, and he is so unbearably charming you want to hate him for it.

One afternoon, sometime after the first anniversary of the war, Harry comes in a few minutes after closing one Saturday. You are only open a half day on Saturdays that aren’t Hogsmeade weekends for the students, the rest of the day is reserved for your personal research and any outside contracts.

Today you are in a foul mood. A customer who wasn’t paying attention knocked over half your display, everyone you’ve interacted with has been in some sort of “who can annoy Severus the most” contest, and worst of all, you’ve been working on the same experimental potion for weeks and have got nowhere with it. 

You’re torn because you definitely want to see Harry, of course you want to see him, he’s perfect and wonderful and if you had the capacity to admit it to yourself you’d realize you were in love with him. But you also don’t want to see Harry, because adding a dose of longing and unrequited love to your already terrible day is not going to do anything to improve your mood.

“Hey, are you busy?” Harry asks, and he has an odd sort of quality to him today, almost nervous.

“Yes,” you clip at him, noting down the change in the potion from yellow to aquamarine with the addition of 25 grams of powdered bicorn horn. At least that step was working as it ought to.

“Oh,” he says. He hesitates a moment, which is entirely unlike him. You look up.

“I was wondering if you’d go out with me today,” he says.

“Where?” you say, before you can remember your answer is supposed to be “no”.

“It’s a surprise,” he says. “But you’d have to leave the potion. “For...well, at least for a few hours.”

The idea interests you, you certainly can’t say that it doesn’t. But do you really want to put yourself in that position? Spend the day with Harry, being constantly reminded of what you can’t have? And besides, you have been working hard on this potion. Putting it under stasis would more than likely ruin it. But the thought of sending Harry away doesn’t appeal either. 

The next thing he says at least makes the decision a bit easier.

“I’d really like you to come,” he says softly. “But if you really can’t leave the potion, I understand. Maybe I could stay and help?” he adds, his tone hopeful, though you can’t imagine why. Potions and Potters really don’t mix.

So what do you do?

Leave and spend the day with Harry, go to Chapter 17

Stay and let him help, go to Chapter 18


	17. Go out with Harry

“Alright, let’s go,” you say, before you can realize what you’ve agreed to. 

Harry’s entire face lights up, as if you’ve just made his whole week, which can’t be possible, but the fluttering warmth his expression gives you makes it worth it that you’ll likely be leaving the potion to ruin. You set a stasis charm on it to last the next several hours. Harry helps you tidy up the workspace and close up the shop.  
“I’m so happy you agreed, Severus,” Harry says, and it’s impossible not to let your expression soften at his excitement. “We’re going someplace Muggle, do you want to change first?

You excuse yourself to the small flat above the apothecary where you live. You take a few minutes to neaten up, change into dark trousers. Not certain how smart you should be dressing, you decide to pay it safe with a nice turtleneck. Your hand hovers over the black, and then you hesitate. It’s not a _date_ , surely, but would it be so awful to simply pretend it was for a little while? You select a dark burgundy one instead, and a black coat over it. You fix your hair a bit even, tying it back with a simple silver band. 

When you come back down to meet Harry he stares at you a moment too long.

“Something wrong?” you ask, a bit more prickly than necessary.

Harry shakes his head, that odd expression still on his face. “No! Not at all...not at all. You look very nice, Severus.” He smiles, and it takes everything in you not to melt. He holds out a pocket watch to you, which you assume must be a Portkey. “This will take us to the Wizarding district, and we’ll walk out to the Muggle side from there.”

“Of?”

“I told you, it’s a surprise!”

The pulling sensation of the Portkey disorients you for a moment until you adjust to the surroundings, the language around you.

“Are we in--”

“Paris,” Harry says, grinning. “You said you haven’t been in years, and I never have, but Hermione told me all the best places to go! There’s a museum she says you’ll love, then I thought we’d walk along back towards the wizarding section, and then I booked us a table at this posh restaurant with a great view of the city.”

“You took me to Paris,” you say dumbly, stating the obvious. Was this a date? This is starting to feel like a date. You decide you hate Harry, because he is obviously unbearably cruel, taking you off on a surprise day trip to Paris _as friends_. 

“This way,” he says excitedly and before you know what's happening you’re walking hand in hand towards a museum you’ve only read about and never been able to visit. And you love it, and you love Harry. You visit there, then a row of shops, including a bookshop you could spend days lost in. Harry insists on purchasing your books for you, and you are hopelessly in love with him. After several hours of exploring the city, you arrive at the posh restaurant Harry mentioned. The view is beautiful, the food is exquisite, and oh, Merlin, this has to be a date.

And it’s far and away the best date you’ve ever been on. Not that there’s much competition, but sweet Circe, how could you ever ask for anything better than this?

“This was amazing, Harry,” you say, and you are rewarded with another glowing smile.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I wanted it to be special.”

“Why did you bring me here, Harry?” you ask softly. If he’s going to break your heart, you want him to get it over with now.

But he doesn’t break your heart. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I wanted...I wanted to tell you how I felt about you,” he says. “I know we’ve got to be friends over the past year, but I want...I want to be more than that. I want to be with you, Severus. You are clever and gorgeous and I...and I love you,” he adds at the end, so quickly you might not have caught it if you weren’t hanging on his every word. 

You just stare at him for a moment, frozen in place. “You...love me?” you ask, almost afraid to believe it. In response, he takes your hand across the table, hold it, strokes his thumb over the back of your hand.

“I love you,” he repeats. 

When you leave the restaurant, hand in hand and pressed together as tightly as you can while still being able to move, you feel like you’re walking on air. You keep stopping to steal a kiss. “When do we have to go back?” you ask with reluctance. Portkey’s are set to a timer.

“Well, there’s uh, two options,” he says. You raise an eyebrow and he continues. We can go back in--” he checks his watch, “twenty minutes. Or...tomorrow midday.”

“Tomorrow?” you ask, more excitement in your tone than you meant to revel.

“There’s a little hotel,” Harry starts to say, and you cut him off with a long, heated kiss.

“Tomorrow,” you say with finality. Harry grins and leads the way.

You are barely in the room when you pull him as close as you can, kiss him hard, and tangle your fingers in his unruly black hair. You help each other out of your clothes. When he sees the mass of scar tissue at your neck you move to dim the lights and he stops you. “Gorgeous,” he simply murmurs, and kisses softly down the side of your neck, over your throat, and runs his hands along your sides. Your breath catches at the tenderness of it, and before you can go weak, you begin to kiss down his chest. You stop to tease a nipple with your tongue, nip down over his ribs, and stroke his hard cock, delighting in the sounds he makes, heady sighs and moans of pleasure.

You move your mouth to the thick shaft, taking the head between your lips and swirling over it with your tongue. You start out slow, teasingly, until he’s panting, struggling not to thrust up, then pick up the pace, firmer strokes with your hand, harder suction. Just as you’re getting into what sounds like a very pleasurable rhythm, he reaches down, pulls you up into a crushing kiss and rolls you over on the bed, frotting against your own hard cock. He continues kissing you, your mouth, your face, down over your neck as he twists his fingers into your hair and tugs, just hard enough to feel perfect. You moan and try to catch your breath against the assault of sensations, and Harry keeps pressing against you, his cock hard and leaking precome, rubbing against your own heated flesh until he lets out a guttural moan and a string of nonsense endearments. 

Still not quite over the peak yourself, you snap your hips up chasing the mounting pleasure, though Harry has stilled. He recovers quickly, and moves down, pins down your hips with his hands and kisses along your body, sucking a nipple, fondling your bollocks, until moving down to your cock, taking it fully in his mouth. You’re so close it only takes a few sucks until you’re coming, and he swallows around you. You thrust your hips, riding out the aftershocks of orgasm, until he moves off, presses a kiss to your belly and turns on his side, facing you.

“Well, that was amazing,” he says, eyes still flushed and bright.

“It was perfect,” you say. “The perfect end to a perfect day.”

He tilts his head, gives a smirk. “End? I’m not done with you yet.”

You huff a laugh. “How young do you think I am?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, snuggling up against you, tangling you both further in the sheets. “I am never going to be done with you.”

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	18. Stay and let him help

“I don’t have time to go out today,” you say firmly. At Harry’s disappointed look, you sigh. “You can stay and help if you want. But you will do exactly as I say, understand?”

He brightens a bit, and nods his head. “I promise.”

You shake away the idea of spending the day with Harry outside of the shop, not wanting to dwell on what the “surprise” might have been, and especially not the strange way the invitation made you feel. It appeared there was something specific he wanted to say to you, and you don’t want to think too much about what that might have been.

For now, you focus on the potion. This one is quite experimental, and has been brewing for three days already, each step more precise than the last. You’ve taken notes on the process and you add three ounces of powdered moonstone, a few grains at a time until the potion turns a soft lilac color. 

“What’s the potion meant to do?” Potter asks after roughly chopping the sage you’ve asked him to prepare and handing it over.

“None of your business,” you say with a scowl. “Perhaps if you’d paid attention even once in class you might be able to guess at the ingredients.

He frowns, and there’s something in his face that isn’t just irritation. “Why do you have to be like this? I’m just asking."

You don't know why you're being so rude to him. Maybe you're still unsettled by the invitation. Maybe you're still confused about the entire nature of the relationship between you and Potter, how oddly close you've got over the past several months. 

You shake your head, refusing to dwell on it any further and just curtly issue instructions, which Harry follows dutifully. 

Now this is the part of the potion you hesitate over. Your experiments haven't got to this point yet, but with the correct final ingredient, your potion will hopefully be a success. Otherwise, it might be a mess. The trouble is, you always get the properties of two particular ingredients confused, and you are loath to go look it up in front of Harry and admit weakness. No, you're almost certain you know exactly what to put in next.

So what's the next ingredient?

Well? 

Lacefly wings, chapter 19

Lacewing flies, chapter 20


	19. Lacefly wings

“Hand me the lacefly wings,” you say with a certainty you don’t quite feel.

He does, and you measure out twelve grams worth and add them in one by one. 

The option gives an odd sort of gurgle, but settles done after a moment and turns a brilliant pink. Success!

You think anyway. It's the right color, the right consistency. If you managed correctly this should be a happiness potion, stronger and longer lasting than a Cheering Charm. 

The amount of steam coming off the cauldron turns thicker, and before you can properly ward the fumes coming from the potion away from you both, the waves of light pink, glittery smoke have covered you both. 

Harry coughs, and you taste something like strawberries. You put up a protective spell around the contents of the cauldron and then vanish the smoke in the air. There shouldn't be any ill effects, and if you and Harry are both cheery, well that's only for the better, isn't it.

In fact, you are feeling pretty nice. Warm all over, and a bit fluttery. Really, really nice, actually.

"Severus, what...uh, what was that potion supposed to do?" Harry asks. He's got a note of concern in his voice, so you face him, and--

Oh, Merlin, was he this beautiful a moment ago? His eyes are so bright, you could get lost in them, his face is flushed and gorgeous, and those full, dark lips are so tantalizing, he darts a pink tongue out, and runs it over...

Oh, no.

Oh, _no_.

All the blood that was in your useless brain has been redirected to your cock, and within moments you are so impossibly hard it hurts.

"A, uh, cheering...potion," you manage to stammer out, and you wonder if you can make an antidote or if you should just chain yourself to the wall before you do something you shouldn't.

But Harry moves closer, a gleam in his eye that makes you moan just thinking of the possibilities. "I'm a bit more than cheery," he whispers, and you are drawn to each other like magnets, collapsing against each other as you press your mouth to his and attempt to devour him.

"Please, can we, can I touch you, please?" He pants. Absolutely nothing in the world sounds better than that, so you say yes.

In fact you say yes several times, more like, "oh, yes, yes, Harry please, please, yes," as you roll around on your apothecary floor, tearing each other's clothes off and attempting to touch as much naked skin as physically possible.

"Please, please fuck me, I need it," you groan, not above begging, because you're suddenly certain that the only thing you need in life at this moment is his cock in you. That it's the only thing that will relive this unbearable, aching need. 

The idea seems to suit him, he moans, helps you turn over, grinds against your backside for a moment while kissing down your neck. 

He summons lubricant from Merlin knows where and you’re amazed and incredibly frustrated with the time he takes to prepare you. But fingers are not enough, not nearly enough, and you clench around the digits and cry out, begging for more.

He finally acquiesces and thrusts in, hard and fast and the pleasure overtakes you, he's got you half pinned, fucking you like his life depends on and all you can do is moan and plead and beg. 

It's over quickly for both of you, how could it not be? But your orgasm is so intense that you lie on the floor for several moments, sweaty and sated with a dazed smile on your face until you remember how to breathe again.

Harry is a bit dazed too, but the reality of the situation hits him first, and he scrambles up into a seated position, eyes wide.

"Oh, Severus, I'm-I'm so sorry, I don't know what came over me, I--"

"Sorry for giving me the best sex of my life?" you reply, because what's just happened hasn't _quite_ hit you yet.

When it does hit a moment later and you are absolutely mortified, what Harry says next throws you into a tailspin. 

"Not how I planned our first time would be," he says, and your world shifts.

"You...you wanted this?" you ask.

Harry winces, "Well I had, I had hoped...I had a big plan today, where i was going to...going to tell you I love you."

He waits for your reaction, still naked on the floor, completely vulnerable.

"I love you too, Harry," you say, because after what just happened it doesn't really make sense to keep that to yourself any longer. 

His whole face cracks wide open into a grin and lies back down on the hard floor, pulling you closer to him and laughing like an idiot. 

Oh, wait, that's you laughing like a damn fool.

"Well, that's one way to speedrun it," he says and kisses you.

You kiss back, deeper, and the arousal spikes again. You moan into the kiss.

"Want to go again?" Harry asks you.

"Absolutely," you reply. You still can't shake the giddiness of Harry's declaration of love and you don't plan to ever let him go after this.

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	20. Lacewing flies

“Hand me the lacewing flies,” you say with a certainty you don’t quite feel.

He does, and you measure out twelve grams worth and add them in one by one. 

Oh, no. It’s bubbling now and turning black. The entire thing sours and you vanish it in disgust. Ruined again!

“What happened?” Harry asks, concerned and of course you do the worst possible thing and blow up at him. 

“What happened, you idiot boy, is you made me waste days of research and hundreds of dollars worth of ingredients!” you shout, and the words are already out before you can take them back. 

“I made you?” he shouts back. “How is this possibly my fault?” 

It isn’t his fault, of course, you made a mistake, and your temper got the best of you. But you dig your heels in, because of course you do. You shout and say cruel things to the person who’s been kinder to you than anyone in recent memory. 

Fed up, Harry finally announces he’s leaving.

You watch him walk out the door, sigh, and put your head in your hands. A flick of your wand sets your worktable to rights and vanishes the mess. 

What’s the matter with you? Harry just left moments ago, if you leave now you can still catch him. He’s a good man, and he’s inclined to be forgiving, at least if you can figure out how to apologize properly. Perhaps the whole wrecked day can still be salvaged, if you can catch up to him in time.

You could kick yourself for refusing Harry’s invitation in the first place, and all for some stupid potion. It’s not too late to try and fix things. You hurry out the door and follow Harry, thinking about what you will say, and how you can make it up to him.

This isn’t the end of your story, Severus, you still have the power to write your own ending. But up until now you’ve made all the wrong choices. And this chapter, at least, is over. 

THE END


	21. Return to teaching

You don’t know if your sense of imagination has fizzled up in the boiling pot of stress your past few years have been, or if you just long to return to a sense of normalcy, a place you’ve called home for a much larger part of your life than you’ve been anywhere else.

But whatever your reasoning is, you decide to go back to Hogwarts and resume your post as teacher.

Not as Headmaster though. At least not anytime soon. You don’t know if you can face that office again, those portraits, Albus on the wall beside you. You hadn’t even touched the rooms, simply Flooing to your old sleeping quarters this past year. You didn’t think you could bear to enter them, let alone move anything of his, replace it with your own, not in that sham of a promotion.

You shake the ghosts of your thoughts away and settle back into your rooms in the Dungeons. You’ll be the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor this year, and for as many years as you like it, according to Minerva.

Harry Potter comes back for his Eighth year along with Granger and a few others. Most of the seventh year is repeating too, considering not much in the way of education was really going on, particularly not in this classroom.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, and it doesn’t take very long at all for things to start to feel almost normal. 

It’s both easier and more difficult than you thought it would be, slipping back into normalcy. Difficult, mostly, because it shouldn’t be so easy, you shouldn’t be able to just have another normal day and forget about the new ghosts, the horrors of the past year, the things you’ve done.

Potter, strangely, seems to understand best of all. 

You don’t know when precisely you became friends, if you can even call it that. You only know that you are not enemies, not anymore. He’s respectful and dutiful in class. You don’t really have the heart to take points out of spite, or assign unnecessary detentions, like you may have in the past. 

Harry hangs around the classroom sometimes, shows up too early, stays a bit too late. 

You ask him why one day, and he just shrugs. “I like it here,” he says. “It’s quiet.”

You tell him if he’s going to be hanging around, he might as well make himself useful.

And so it begins, him using his free period to help you grade papers. Then suggesting assignments for the younger years. He tells you about his experience with Dumbledore’s Army, what it was like teaching defensive magic to his peers. He has a wistful look in his eyes when he tells you, so you say he sounds like he might have a knack for teaching. 

He looks thoroughly shocked by this, but whether it is from the content of your words or the fact that you’ve technically just given him a compliment, you aren’t sure. 

It catches you off guard when your daily interactions turn from academic to more personal. But it’s only natural the boy wants to learn more about his parents. You indulge him, at least when it’s about Lily. You have very little that’s nice to say about James, and oddly enough you find yourself preferring to say nothing at all, instead of insulting the boy’s father right to his face. Maybe you’re growing up a bit too. 

When Harry starts talking, he has a hard time stopping, so once the conversation has turned to family, he starts confiding in you more about his, about awful Petunia and her terrible family. Good riddance, you think, when he tells you they’ve moved away. But you can see how it still hurts him, the rejection of the only family he knows. You know a little something about that. Before you can really gauge whether that conversation has slipped into inappropriate territory, you find yourself confiding a bit in him too. 

You keep forgetting he knows so much from your memories. Maybe that explains the connection between the two of you, that growing sort of intimacy. 

It's towards the end of the term that you begin to realize the boy may have actually developed feelings for you. He references the Half Blood Prince obliquely, how he felt about him, the infatuation with the you of the past, so clever, so funny. He looks at you a little too long, smiles a bit too much. 

It’s simply a crush, you tell yourself, and he is still your student. But the boy is eighteen now, almost nineteen, and graduation is just a few days away. 

You decide to try not to think about it, though it’s a clear weakness, since you also do nothing to push the boy away. You spend your whole life pushing people away, but apparently when it comes to an infatuated Harry Potter you find yourself not quite up to the task. 

And then the moment that’s been building up for the past several months finally comes to a head, the night after the graduation feast. You’re in your office finishing things off for the year, it’s late and there’s a knock at the door. 

It’s Harry.

“Can I speak with you, sir?” Harry asks, and he’s oddly formal, nothing like he was even yesterday, when he came in to bother you, laughing.

“Yes, Mr. Potter?” you say.

“I wish you’d call me Harry,” he says. When you don’t reply, he continues. “I’ve graduated now, so I’m no longer your student. And I don’t know if you...if you feel the same way, but I like to think we’re at least friends, and, well…”

You take pity on the boy. “And?”

“And I want to tell you how I feel about you. Ever since I got your memories, things changed for me. I waited by your bedside for weeks, hoping you would wake up, hoping your story wasn’t over. And this past year, getting to know you. I think. I think I’m in love with you.”

He’s of age, and he’s no longer your student, if just by a few hours. And you admit you care for him a great deal. You believe his feelings are genuine, though you haven’t allowed yourself to entertain the notion until now, you can’t honestly say you don’t feel something for him too. His heart hangs in the balance now. 

What do you do?

To accept him, go to Chapter 22

To refuse and let him down gently, go to Chapter 23


	22. Accept his offer

The boy is standing right in front of you, asking you to love him, and who are you to refuse?

“You love me?” you repeat, barely believing what you hear.

“I do,” he says solemnly, then breaks out into a laugh. “I really, really do.”

You move closer to him, hovering inches away from his face, but you wait for him to make the first move, to finalize this decision for you. He leans in, presses his warm lips to yours, and oh, you are weak.

It’s his first time, he makes that clear, so you are gentle with him, treat him with the reverence he deserves. Kissing in your office, heatedly, pulling him so he’s seated on top of your desk, the feel of his hands twisting in your hair, it is all too much, and suddenly not enough.

You pull back and he looks up, concerned. You gesture round your office, shake your head. “Not here.”

He lets you lead him through the doorway to your quarters and he looks around, taking in the sight. You hesitate, has it all got too real, does he want to stop? But then he grabs your arm, pulls you round and tugs you into another hot kiss. You lead him blindly towards the bedroom and before you know it you are both half undressed, strewn across your bed.

Undressing him is like unwrapping a present, and you stop to savor every inch of skin revealed, every sigh and moan. You find all the spots he likes to be kissed best, trail your lips down his neck, over his shoulder. You tweak a nipple, are gifted with a breathy sigh, and you try to run your hands over everywhere at once.

He returns the favor, seemingly not able to get enough of you either, and he trails his fingertips along the knots of thick scarring along your neck, with a tenderness you do not deserve. “I’m sorry,” you mutter, understanding how little beauty you’ve brought to the bedroom, everything good is all Harry. 

“I’m not,” he replies, and kisses the scars, your jaw, your face. “I’m happy,” he murmurs, “so happy, this is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

You take your time preparing him, teasing his cock with your lips and tongue as you use one finger, then two to stretch him until he’s begging for more. When you join, it’s the happiest you’ve ever been, by a long, long ways, and after a symphony of moans and sighs and whispered sweet nothings, you reluctantly pull out, but gather him in your arms, holding him close. 

His head is pillowed against your chest, and no one has ever looked more beautiful.

“That was perfect,” he says. “I love you,” and your heart sings.

“You’re perfect,” you reply, because he is, the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and you’ll work your whole life to be worthy of him. 

“I love you, too,” you say, and his beautiful eyes crinkle at the sides and he grins.

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	23. Refuse him

You sigh. This is going to be difficult. 

You start out gently, ask him to sit down. You tell him you're flattered by his offer, but he's just too young, the difference between you too great to even consider it.

He looks hurt, of course, and before he can argue with you, you attempt to smooth things a bit. You tell him he's a wonderful person, clever and kind, and that anyone would be lucky to have him.

"But not you, I suppose?" he says glumly.

"Of course I would be," you say, because it's true. Harry Potter would easily be the best thing that ever happened to you. But why should you get to have him, just because he's offered himself up on a silver platter? When the boy hasn't even really lived? 

So that's what you tell him to do. You tell him to travel, and to meet new people. To go experience life, don't tie himself down, just because he's young and wants to be loved. 

You tell him he's barely got to have a childhood, his school years were spent in a war against a genocidal maniac, he bloody _died_ and came back and he hasn't given himself the chance to live at all, the chance to know himself. 

He seems surprised to hear you say all this, but then he nods, accepting. But instead of slinking away after being rejected, his face turns thoughtful and he surprises you in turn.

"Alright," he says firmly "but you have to, as well."

"Have to what, Potter?" you ask with a frown.

"Live." 

You scoff. "Potter, I have. I am nearly forty years old."

He rolls his eyes. "Oh, yes. One foot in the grave, then?" He turns serious. "No, honestly. You say all this about enjoying myself and living my life, but when have you? Between Voldemort and Dumbledore, were you ever your own man? Did you ever get to chase after what you wanted? Get to live?"

The boy really isn't allowed to be this wise, but you can't figure out how to argue.

"We'll write each other letters," he says decisively. 

“I don’t know if that’s wise,” you begin to argue, but he cuts you off. 

“Well how else will we know if we’re keeping our promises?” he says. “And it is a promise. I’ll live, but I want you to as well.”

“You think you’ll still be in love with me, even years from now,” you say. “That’s why you want to keep in touch.”

“Maybe,” Harry says. “Maybe you’re right, this is just a crush. But…” he drifts off, considering, then simply smiles. “But I don’t know, Professor. I think it might keep.”

He bids you goodnight, and he steals a peck on your cheek, which you don’t really have the energy to condemn him for.

Students leave, the castle empties, and summer settles in.

Harry writes his letters.

He writes about he and his friends traveling to the Continent, how much fun he’s having, all the new sights he takes in. He writes to you about starting at a Muggle University, then changing his major three times, simply because he can. He doesn’t abandon the Wizarding world, taking a part time job here and there, deciding what he wants, what he likes. When he finishes uni, he signs up for a Charms mastery, emphasis on spellcrafting. He meets some people, and Severus does believe he gives them a proper chance, but girlfriends and boyfriends alike never seem to stick around long. 

Meanwhile, you keep your promises to. You write him back, and discuss your own travels, first to things like Potions conferences, then more exotic, an expedition in the South American rainforest, a safari in Africa. Because, you decide with a thrill, you can. 

You don’t really like teaching, Potter was right about that, but when Minerva comes to you for the third year in a row and asks you to take over as Headmaster, you finally accept. 

It’s different, this time around. You don’t know whether it’s just the much kinder circumstances, or whether it’s because you have finally settled into your skin more, but you approach the position with a passion and excitement you’ve never had for work before. You actually like the paperwork, the attention to detail, the little logical minutiae of the job as well the ability to make broad, sweeping decisions and new changes.

You update the curriculum for the modern era, you put an end to the petty House divisions, you even include squibs in the student body. It’s time to make the wizarding world a better place, and you finally believe in yourself to do it. 

The years tick by, the letters keep going, crossing oceans and continents, then cities and towns, until one day, so many years later, Harry Potter shows up in your office.

He’s taller and broader than you remember him, with a dark beard and an easygoing manner. He looks good. He looks like he’s settled into his own skin as well. 

He’s inquiring about the open Charms Master position, since Filius is finally retiring. You make a show of conducting the interview, but the press has already caught buzz that Potter would be applying, so no one else really stands a chance.

You talk for a long time, there in your office, catching up, discussing things that may not have made it into the letters. You tell him how things have changed.

And he tells you what’s stayed the same. 

You open a bottle of Firewhiskey to share, long after the particulars of the position have been spelled out. You talk and he talks. He smiles, and you smile back. Hope hangs in the air between you, glittering like light caught between glass.

Looks like it not only kept, but grew. 

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	24. Wake him up and demand answers

Well, there’s no time like the present and you want to know where you are and what’s going on right this instant.

You reach for the first thing you can think to grab, your pillow, and chuck it at the sleeping form next to you as hard as you can manage. 

Potter startles awake and nearly falls out of his chair in surprise, either at the sudden assault or the fact that you are conscious. You try your best at an angry glower, but considering you’ve managed to thunk your head back against the wall in your ill advised sudden movement, it probably comes off closer to pained distress.

“Sir, you’re awake!” Potter shouts the obvious at you at what seems to be near deafening volume and you wince involuntarily. Looks like it remained to be seen if any of Potter’s brain cells managed to survive the battle. 

“Obviously,” you rasp out and you are immediately annoyed by the unimpressive strain of your own voice. “Explain! What happened?” you choke, the words grating over your ruined vocal cords like sandpaper over glass. 

Potter recovers his surprise quickly enough, and even attempts to return the pillow to you. A kind gesture, but you have no tolerance for kind gestures at the moment. The last thing you remember, all hope was lost and the world was falling apart, so you are uninterested in your injuries, or your own pain, you want to know _what happened_.

So Potter explains. Quickly, and disjointedly, obviously caught off guard, but the words spill out, each one more unbelievable than the last. Dying and coming back to life. Some sort of absurd conversation that was either a hallucination or a supernatural occurrence in King’s Cross station, of all the mundane and unlikely places. 

The description of the memories you shared with your dying breaths (well, what you had thought would be your dying breaths, anyway, was what tipped the scales from unbelievable to truly mortifying. The boy speaks to you, his hated enemy, with an unabashed reverence. How brave, how noble, how _heroic_. 

“Sir, how can I ever thank you, for everything you did, for all of us? For me,” he adds quietly, his voice whispered awe. 

You shake your head so violently it hurts, not believing this sudden change of opinion, refusing to reconcile it with what you know to be true about yourself--you didn’t intend to survive this war, let alone be _admired_ for your part in things. The part you played for no other reason than that you needed to atone in the first place. The things you’ve done, the wrongs you’ve committed, the selfishness and misery that have eaten you up since childhood, didn’t the boy see any of that, recognize it for what it was? Recognize you for what _you_ are, a bitter man, full of bile and acid?

Potter looks horrified, and you think at first it's because he does finally see, finally understand, maybe he’s mastered legilimency in his time away from school and he’s just seen every thought in your head. But then the pain makes itself known and you realize you’ve split your wounds moving your head so vigorously the bandages at your neck have started soaking through.

Potter calls for someone, and someone arrives. Poppy, firing off stunning spells and quickly setting you to rights. You are a bit annoyed she doesn’t immediately blame Potter for putting you in this position, but she knows you too well, knows you’ve limped your way out of her infirmary beds before.

“Honestly, Severus,” Poppy sighs, and you feel as if you are eleven years old again, receiving a lecture about staying put and _letting yourself heal_. 

Potter stands awkwardly to the side. He wants to stay, you can tell, it’s written all over his face, and you feel a sudden pang you don’t understand. Why was he sleeping beside your bed? How long had he been there? 

You could ask him to stay. Maybe have a slightly calmer conversation. Get to the bottom of what he was doing here, standing vigil by your bedside for Merlin knows how long.

Or you can tell him to get his arse away from your sickbed. You don’t need him. You don’t need anyone at all. 

Tell him to get out, chapter 25

Ask him to stay, chapter 26


	25. Tell him to get out

Oh, Severus. No man is an island, you know. 

“Get out!” you yell, with as much force as you can muster. Which isn’t as much as you wished. He looks hurt, crestfallen, actually, for no reason you can possibly understand. But he scurries away nonetheless. Poppy shakes her head at you, as she refreshes the bandages. Her disappointment is palpable but you refuse to meet her gaze. 

“That boy has barely left your bedside in a _month_ , you cranky old goat,” she mutters.

You feel something like guilt. “I didn’t ask him to,” you mutter, because the laws of reciprocity and debt are the only thing you understand. If he was here, it must be because he feels like he owes you something, which he doesn’t. Why else would anyone want to stay?

Poppy sighs again, sadder now, and with a twinge of frustration. She has that look about her that she knows something you don’t, and you hate it, hate feeling like there’s something you’re missing out on, some understanding the whole class has that you can’t quite grasp. You tell her to leave as soon as she finishes, and she does at least, after insisting you take some potions and agree to rest. You don’t want her around either.

But it’s understandable, that need to push people away. You come by it rightly, that anger inside you, that awful rage. And why are you so full of rage? Because you are so full of grief, of course. 

You stew in your anger some more, until the potions kick in, and sleep overtakes you. You have dark, angry dreams, sharp at the edges, full of a desire to find someone, to get somewhere, do something, but the knowledge that you will inevitably fail follows close behind you, the sense of time running out manifest in a beast a hair's breadth away, nipping at your heels and breathing down your neck. 

You awake the next morning just as tired. You insist to be relocated to your private rooms, where no one can visit without your explicit approval. You recover, slowly and surely, but you don’t really _heal_. 

Life moves on though, with or without you. You get news of the castle being rebuilt from Poppy, and Minerva, who uses her Headmistress powers to wrangle her way into your rooms and yell for a bit, and then cry a little, and then hug you, much to the shock of both of you. You’re well enough to leave your rooms finally, weeks later but you choose to stay inside, having no desire to teach. Minerva lets you stay, but she’s worried about you, she says. The school welcomes a new influx of students, time creeps on.

The entire wizarding world seems desperate to move on. 

So why haven’t you?

The thought strikes you, one day, after day upon day of endless nothing. Why have you been sitting in your room for months, ignoring letters, more letters than you ever expected, and somehow none of them Howlers? Letters from colleagues, from students, several official looking ones from the Ministry, and over and over and over again that messy script on the address label you know belongs to Potter. The curiosity finally gets the better of you, and you start to read. 

You pick up one of the more nondescript ones first. 

_Dear Professor Snape_ it starts and what follows is an effusive thank you and a wish for a speedy recovery from a Hufflepuff girl in your NEWTs Potions three years ago. You put it aside, a twinge of warmth in your chest glowers like an ember.

So many follow the same format _thank you for everything you did for us_ and _looking back, I realize why the Carrows never figured out where we were hiding, when you must have known, didn’t you sir?_ and over and over in letter after letter _Harry Potter says we wouldn’t have won without you_. Loathe as you’d be to admit it, you’re beginning to get a bit choked up. Appreciation and admiration are not feelings you’ve been known to inspire in anyone, the most you feel you’ve ever managed is some measure of begrudging respect. 

"I'm alive," you think to yourself, and you suddenly realize the truth of it. You survived when you never expected to, never intended to, and to be perfectly honest, usually didn’t even want to. You’re alive, and what are you going to do about it? 

__For years, you’ve been focused on doing what it takes to survive, living another day in a hope to save as many as you can._ _

__But now you can live. The Ministry letters award you an Order of Merlin, a tidy sum as a pension for the rest of your days, and a full pardon. The name Harry Potter is in these letters too, though obliquely, and the fact that the boy has seemingly gone to such lengths for you befuddles you enough that you finally open his letters, having saved them for last._ _

__He writes much more than you expected._ _

__He writes about himself, and the memories you shared, and what they meant to him. He writes about the great burden that was placed on you both and the similarities he sees between the two of you. You scoff at first, but as he enumerates them, you find yourself sinking into an uneasy sort of commiseration with him, the boy who grew up in the cupboard under the stairs might not  
be so different from the boy who grew up in that shoddy falling down house on Spinner’s end._ _

__He writes about you, and what he’s gleaned from your memories, and what he thinks now, looking back at things through a different lens._ _

__He writes to invite you to his home, and to tea, and as the letters go on they become a general standing invitation to basically whatever and wherever you want, as long as you finally let him talk to you._ _

__You feel the thread of connection he keeps casting out, as tangible as the paper in your hand._ _

__It would take so little to reach back._ _

__So you do._ _

__You are so tired of being tired, and being alone, and growing more bitter until you wake up one day as an old man filled with regret. You can finally live, not for Lily, or for Dumbledore, or for some misplaced sense of obligation. You can live for yourself._ _

__You pick up a quill and you decide to write Potter back._ _

__And then, you decide to write yourself a new ending, a new story._ _

__And most of all, you decide to _live_._ _

__THE END_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote below is paraphrased in this chapter:
> 
> Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.  
> \--Anne Carson (Translator), Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides


	26. Ask him to stay

Well, you’ve never met a mystery you didn’t want to solve. You take pity on the boy. And you do want to know more, not least why the devil he was at your bedside when you woke up. 

“Potter,” you growl. “Stay.” You give an attempt at a disinterested motion with your hand when his entire face brightens inexplicably. 

He immediately moves closer, attempts to assist Poppy. He moves the pillow back behind you, fluffs it. It’s bizarre, the attention he gives you, the way his hands almost seem to linger behind your head as he helps settle you back down. Almost _tender_. You blink rapidly, shake that lunatic thought away.

Poppy fusses over you some more, plies you with potions and Potter takes a seat in the chair next to you again, pulling it closer. You frown. 

“Why are you here?” you ask, because you can think of no other way to phrase it than as plainly as possible. 

“I wanted to be here when you woke up,” he replies.

Well that answer may have sound plain but it makes absolutely no sense, so you persist.

“Why?”

And then Potter does something you never expected.

He blushes. Two bright spots of pink appear under those bright green eyes. And he looks away, almost nervous. He starts talking again, rapidly. He talks about his petitions to the Ministry, the surprising fact that you’ll be receiving an Order of Merlin, and there it is again, that awe about how you’re a _hero_. The boy is insane, clearly, more’s the pity, but he doesn’t stop rambling, filling in most of the factual questions you wanted answers to, as well as quite a few answers you’d never thought to ask, such as the Granger girl being in Australia for reasons you couldn’t quite follow, and the fact that Lupin apparently had spawn wandering about. 

Either the stress of the past several minutes or the healing potions are beginning to get to you, and you find it hard to keep your eyes open. Poppy, still hovering nearby, notices and starts to shoo Potter away. 

“Oh, well, goodnight, sir,” Potter says. He moves as if to touch you but pulls back, hesitating. You stamp down the absurd flare of disappointment at the aborted motion. 

You fight off sleep for a bit longer when you realize Poppy and Potter are talking in hushed tones about some medical problem the boy is having. Whatever ailment it is wouldn't normally interest you, but the words “creature inheritance” piques your interest. 

Creature? Leave it to Potter to have all manner of magical rarities befall him. 

You try to stay awake and hear a little bit more, but the fuzzy edges of sleep overtake you just after Potter laughs humorlessly and asks Poppy if his skin will turn to scales.

What kind of creature could Harry be? Hmm, what do you think when you imagine a creature with scales? 

Something that flies, chapter 27

Something that swims, chapter 28

Something that slithers, chapter 29


	27. Something that flies

Potter keeps visiting you in the infirmary, whether you want him to or not.

You surprise yourself when you start realizing that you mostly want him to. He’s a good companion, as it happens, during the tedious days of recovering from what should have been a fatal wound. He talks, Merlin he talks _so much_ , but it isn’t the inane chatter you might have unkindly expected to hear a year ago. And it isn’t subjects you’d rather not discuss, either, although difficult topics do find their way into conversation.

As a matter of fact, the boy can be rather entertaining. He’s funny, and a good storyteller. You play cards, you beat him at chess, and when you’re too tired for either of those he reads to you. He has a nice voice, and a better choice of reading material than you thought he might. As the days turn to weeks you find yourself looking forward to his visits. Not especially the gaggle of former students that occasionally accompany him, but when it’s just the two of you it’s almost...comfortable.

The subject of the creature inheritance isn’t brought up, and after a while you start to wonder if maybe you’ve hallucinated it. 

But something seems...off about him. The way he moves is different, there’s a quality of force to it, as if he is much larger than his average frame. He stomps almost, throwing around weight that isn’t there, and his mannerisms have changed. The tilt of his head, the way his eyes seem to thin when he narrows his gaze in on something with rapt attention. 

“Will you put those back?” you ask him one day, your annoyed tone breaking the formerly peaceful atmosphere of the chess game. 

His eyes snap up, confused for a moment until you nod towards his hand. He shrinks a bit, a guilty embarrassment flitting over his features as he removes his hand from his pockets, pulling out three gold pieces from his pocket. Two pawns and a bishop, your captured pieces put to the side of the board and then absentmindedly collected.

“Sorry,” he says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Habit.”

You raise an eyebrow and take advantage of his distraction to put his king into check. “Habit to hoard shiny objects? What are you, part Niffler?”

He freezes and the entire mood changes. You think he’s going to be angry for a moment, but then he deflates. “Not a Niffler,” he mutters. You wait for him to elaborate, but then he simply resigns the game, says something about not feeling well, bids you good night and leaves.

You’ve offended him, somehow, but not on purpose this time, and you aren’t sure how. You remember that half forgotten conversation, creature inheritance and something about scales. 

What could be wrong with Harry?

The next time you see him, you’ve managed to cook up a few half formed theories, but nothing makes any real sense. You have no concrete evidence beyond a few odd mannerisms. 

He’s brought in lunch for you from an Indian takeaway he’s not stopped talking about since he discovered it a few weeks ago. He sets a chicken and vegetable dish with mild curry in front of you, but your eyes are already watering from whatever Harry has gotten for himself, still tucked away in a paper bag halfway across the room.

Harry chatters on and digs into his container and the force of the spice nearly causes you to gag. 

“What the devil did you order?” you manage to choke out. 

“This is the only place I can find that actually makes things properly spicy,”  
he says defensively, though at least he has the decency to put up a spell wall between the two of you to contain the fumes. You guzzle half a glass of water.   
“As you say,” you mutter, but file away this with the other odd information. _Penchant for absurdly spicy food._

When he does finally tell you, it’s not under the circumstances you thought it would be.

In fact, when he tells you, it’s a reveal wrapped in a marriage proposal.

You stare blankly for a few moments after he finishes his long winded explanation. In a reversal of roles, he’s the one in the infirmary bed and you’re in the chair next to him, having been released only days ago.

You clear your throat awkwardly. “I’m going to need you to repeat that.”

He looks tired, drawn features and shadows under dark green eyes. He frowns. “Which part did you not understand?”

“I didn’t understand any of it. But let’s start with you being part dragon.”

“Not part dragon,” he replies. “Infected with _draconius maximus_.”

“That sounds like something out of a particularly dim children’s story,” you say with a scoff.

“Well, I didn’t name it! Long story short, the Hungarian Horntail in fourth year infected me with some weird dragon disease, and now i have dragon characteristics, up to and including the ability to turn into an actual dragon.”

“Why do these things always happen to you,” you say evenly, and Harry just laughs.

“Which brings us to the...er...bonding.”

“Ah, yes,” you say, suddenly uncomfortable. “That.”

“All the Healers and all the research I’ve done points to the fact that I have an unfulfilled bond as to why I’m getting sick. Something about the changing to my magic being unsettled without my...mate.”

“So go find some pretty witch from your fan club, Potter,” you huff, unwilling to dwell too long on why that thought makes you so angry. “I’m sure there’s no shortage of people willing to _mate_ with you.”

“Not just _any_ mate,” he says, his temper so strong compared to his weakened form on the bed. “ _My_ mate. That’s _you_.”

“And what made you decide that?” you snap back.

“I don’t! Magic does! We’re bonded, at least on my end! I know it’s you, because I think about you all the time, and I dream about you, and I feel drawn to you...and…” he trails off, the anger dissipating. “Don’t you feel any of that? I thought you might not, since you’re fully human. Maybe...maybe only the dragon side can tell?”

Well. That could be one explanation for the overly detailed and vivid dreams that have been haunting you for weeks. Not even dreamless sleep potion was able to stop them, and you thought maybe you were simply going mad. 

But no, of course you’re going mad. This idea that any universe would exist in which Harry Potter was so irrevocably in love with you that magic demands you be bonded lest he waste away is the maddest, most ludicrous thing you’ve ever heard of. You can’t agree to bond with Harry! Or rather, magically fulfill a bond that has somehow spontaneously been created!

Can you?

Bond with him, chapter 30

Break the bond, and his heart, chapter 31


	28. Something that swims

Harry is supposed to be finishing his last year at Hogwarts, and you are supposed to be convalescing in peace, but the mystery of “what’s going on with Harry” persists. 

You’ve reluctantly agreed to stay at Hogwarts. Minerva and Poppy won’t stop fussing over you and apparently want you close by. You have to admit, as annoying as they can be, it is nice to be in the familiar walls of Hogwarts instead of your awful old house in Cokeworth. And at least you can prove yourself useful here. You are well enough to brew supplies for the Hospital Wing, and though you can’t teach yet, you can at least help out. You hate more than anything the idea of being forced to simply lie in bed all day.

Harry’s been helping out in the Hospital Wing as well, so your paths tend to cross more often than not. 

Every time you see him, he gets to be a little bit more odd. 

You know what you heard, something about a creature inheritance, and something about scales. You rack your brain looking for possible signs.

You rule out the obvious. Harry’s still playing quidditch in the bright sun so he isn’t a vampire. Half the student body hasn’t declared their undying love, so he isn’t a Veela. You consider werewolf for a moment, before remembering werewolves don’t have scales. Besides, the full moon comes and goes and Harry stays decidedly human. 

But his eyes are doing something...different the next time you see him. Like there’s a film over them for just a moment, blurring the green in the light until Harry blinks several times and it’s back to normal.

You begin to follow him around, desperate to get to the bottom of this. 

Harry’s diet has changed, according to the House Elves, and they can hardly keep him in enough seafood to sate his cravings. 

Curious.

He has a red patch of skin on either side of his neck the next time you see him. You’re not certain if the skin was originally red or if he made it that way from scratching it so damn much. 

“Potter, you’re going to tear out your flesh. Stop that this instant,” you say one day when he comes to collect a new set of headache potion for Poppy. 

“Oh, sorry,” he says, “it’s just so...so _itchy_.”

You roll your eyes and Accio some ointment, 

“Thank you, sir, but that won’t help,” he mutters. “It’s something else,” he adds, embarrassed, and darts off before you can question him further. 

You add it to your running list. You suppose you could just _ask_ him, but where’s the fun in that? 

You find yourself spending more and more time with him. He already came around often enough when you were confined to a bed, but in the months since you’ve been well enough to leave it, he still visits you often. You had to hash out quite a bit after the war, he wanted to go over your memories, wanted to know more about his mother. You’ve got closer, not quite friends exactly, but certainly closer than you’d ever intended to be with Harry Potter. 

One day, you tell Harry a story about Lily, and everything falls into place.

You show him a picture she’d sent you, years and years ago,from a family holiday at the sea. A touristy little shop that sold seashells and trinkets, and her freckled face is stretched wide with a smile, her red hair twisted up and she’s holding sea stars up against it, making herself a crown.

“She called that her ‘mermaid queen’ look,” you say, and Harry looks very strange.

“Did she...did she like mermaids?” he asks haltingly.

“Loved them. She told me once there’s a silly family story, about her great great grandparents being a mermaid and a sailor, and ever since she heard it--that’s what you are!” you shout, finally realizing. “Merperson! The fish, the spots on your neck are gills coming in, and--can you sing?” you ask, curious. Merpeople are known for their singing.

“Not well, but maybe I sound better underwater, I have--wait!” he exclaims, the shock of what you said finally catching up. “How do you know about that?”

“I heard you talking to Madam Pomfrey,” you say. “I’ve been making a list.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?” he replies, and you don’t have a very good answer, so you ignore it.

“How much do you know? About dormant mermaid heritage coming out?”

“Practically nothing,” he says with a groan. “I’ve mostly been trying to ignore it. Honestly, I still can’t get my head around it. I mean, I’ve never even been to the sea!”

He’s done no research, and he’s never even swam in the ocean before? Unacceptable. You don’t know much about merpeople yourself, the species in the Black Lake are freshwater, and if Lily’s story is right, Harry is of the seafaring species. 

You should take him straight to a library, and research everything he needs to know. Or, at least, take him on a trip to the ocean. You can’t believe he’s never been.

To help him research, go to Chapter 32

To take him swimming, go to Chapter 33


	29. Something that slithers

It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s going on. Only until the next full moon, when the day after finds Harry in the hospital bed next to you in the infirmary.

“What’s happened to you now?” you say when you realize who it is. Instead of, “Harry, are you alright?” like a normal person might ask.

“Guess,” he says glumly. “Do you know what day it is? How good are you at astronomy? I should definitely start paying attention.”

Your blood runs cold. Did Greyback attack him? “Werewolf?” you ask, trying not to let your terror show. 

“He shakes his head. “Nothing so simple. It turns out a pesky side effect of the Horcrux has given me some permanent snake tendencies.”

You frown. What? You’ve never heard of anything like this. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Harry says, sitting up with a slight wince. He has no visible injuries, but he looks sore and exhausted. “As near as anyone can tell, every full moon I’m going to turn into a snake.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” you say.

“Hang out with me next month. You won’t believe your eyes,” he says with a drawl.

You lie back in bed and consider for a moment.

“Are you still you? Or do you think like a snake?”

“Still me, actually,” Harry says. “Mostly anyway. I know I’m Harry, but I want to go out and do snake things more than human things. I’m not sure if that’s better.”

Harry just rolls over and goes back to sleep. Shifting forms, particularly against your will, is exhausting, especially if his body isn’t used to it.

Were-snake. Or all the strange things that could happen. And of course they happen to Potter.

Months go by, another full moon, then two, then three and Harry is glum and detached and depressed. 

You take it upon yourself to do some research. You’ve been looking after the boy for years now, and there’s no reason to stop now. Especially when he has some rare malady no one has ever heard of before, and therefore has no idea how to fix. 

It takes several weeks of research, but you think you may have found the answer in a dusty old tome. The original language is lost to the ages, and translation spells can only do so much, but you think you’ve got it, and you are confident in your ability to fill in the gaps.

It’s a complicated ritual. There’s two different potions, one for the affected and one for the brewer. There’s an incantation, magical objects placed in specific points around you both. It has to happen the night before the full moon, outdoors. 

And it is, er, sexual in nature. A lot of the old magical rituals are. Harry would probably not be pleased about that, but he does deserve to know if there’s a way to cure him of this curse.

Hah. “Not pleased.” That’s an understatement. In your experience, no one is ever particularly pleased at the prospect of sex with you. 

It’s risky though. Supposing he even wants to do it, well, _is willing_ to do it, it still might not cure him. You’ve checked and double checked and you are as confident as you can be in your translations, but anything is possible.

Perhaps you’ve been too heavily reliant on your own research, and not thinking enough about Harry. You can talk to his friends, find out how he’s really doing. Maybe they have some alternative advice.

To go right to Harry and go with the ritual, go Chapter 34

To talk to Harry's friends first, go to Chapter 35


	30. Bond with him

Well, when you really think about it, there are worse things than being bonded to someone who is sometimes a very powerful dragon, and sometimes a very clever and charming and attractive young man, isn’t there?

Still thinking in the back of your mind that this was all some kind of elaborate prank, you decide _sure, this might as well happen_ and say “Yes.”

“Yes?” Harry says, his voice scarcely above a whisper. “Yes, you, you feel it too? Or...you’ll do it?”

“Yes, to both,” you say, gaining confidence in the sheer hopefulness of Harry’s tone. 

As if your acceptance alone was enough to cure him, Harry sits up, still weak and shaky but flushed and smiling. “My mate,” he mutters with a possessiveness that does unexpected things to your body, and you find yourself flushing a bit as well. 

You let yourself be drawn into his kiss, and if there was any doubt in your mind that you were a bonded pair, it was gone now. Kissing Harry was like coming home, like puzzle pieces snapping into place. It was like you were finally certain of exactly where you were supposed to be. Right here, with him, at this moment.

He’s clearly much better now, in fact you’d consider him to be at peak health in a way he never has been before. His grin is a bit toothier than it probably should be, and his eyes have an almost reptilian slit to them, but he is still unbearably attractive. Being with him feels right in a way that nothing in your life ever has before. 

He apparates you right out of the hospital room and back to his bedroom. You’re scarcely aware of the changed surroundings, both of you desperate to consummate the bond. 

Your shirt is off, you’re on his bed, and you’re tearing off Harry’s tee when you realize how _hot_ he is. And not hot in the conventional sense, although he certainly is that, but hot as in warm as a fireplace. You press your hands to his chest, savoring the almost uncomfortable _heat_ coming off his flesh.

“Oh, I, uh, I run pretty hot now,” he says with a laugh. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Logically, you think you would mind. You’ve always preferred the cold and the dark until now, and here’s Harry, burning up with light. But you pull his body close to you, squeeze your arms around him and are finally, perfectly _warm_. Maybe it has something to do with being a dragon’s mate, but you’re sure you’ve been freezing every moment of your life until now.

The coupling itself is like something out of a storybook, the constant drum of _true love _echoses in your heartbeats, covers over any nerve or awkwardness and all you feel is closeness, connection, comfort. You feel the consummation take effect, the bond settles into place like the planets coming into alignment, and you cling together for what could be a moment or several days. You’ve lost all sense of time, there is only you and Harry. You and your mate.__

__The next day you test out Harry’s new form in a forest clearing, miles away from civilization, and he’s beautiful then too. Rich crimson scales, an impressive roar, and the same green eyes looking at you like you’re the only thing he sees. He takes you for a flight, and you think _it doesn’t get any better than this.__ _

__THE END_ _

__For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36_ _


	31. Break his heart

What??? Are you out of your mind? No!! This option is not allowed!!!

Harry Potter is a fucking delight and you apparently do not deserve him. You either go back and accept the gift you've been given with proper gratitude, or take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror, you miserable old git.

Unbelievable. For shame, Severus Snape. For shame. 

Return to Chapter One, and make better choices.


	32. Help him research

“To the library, Mr. Potter,” you say decisively gesturing for him to move in the correct direction. He looks amused, but he leads the way, and the two of you soon find yourselves embroiled in several stacks of books. He’s nervous at first, to be discussing this with you, but he settles down when he realizes how interested you are in the topic.

And you are interested, to be perfectly honest. There’s always been something that interests you about the fantasy of merpeople, particularly half breed ones that can switch forms. You suppose it reminds you a bit of how you thought of your own half-blood status, one foot in two worlds, and never quite belonging in either. There’s something lonely about it, and oddly romantic.

You get back to your research. 

When you run out of books in the regular Hogwarts library, you raid the restricted section. And then you take a field trip to the Wizarding university library in London, and before the week is done, you think you and Harry might know more about being a merperson than you know about anything else. 

Harry confides in you that this whole thing made him feel like a freak, and that he’s grateful to you for treating him so normally. He expresses his anxiety that the press will catch wind of it, expose him for what he is.

“Why would you want to be normal?” you say with surprise. Harry Potter gave up any hope of being _normal_ the moment he survived an Avada at fifteen month old. And now he was something else. Something special. “Don’t you think you might like it?”

Harry ponders for a moment. “I don’t...actually know. I haven’t been swimming since it started happening. I haven’t even seen what I’ll look like”

“Well, let’s correct that then,” you say. The only place you can think of that will provide the proper safety and privacy for Harry to explore his new form is the Prefect’s bathroom at Hogwarts.

So that’s where you both go, that very evening, long after curfew when you have the room to yourselves. You realize a bit too late that you don’t actually need to be here for this. In fact, you should think Harry would have told you to leave by now. 

But if he doesn’t ask you to, you aren’t going to volunteer. 

“So I just...go in?” Harry says finally, after the basin has filled with warm salt water. Harry has quite the tolerance for cold water, being a British merperson, so the fact that he’s set the taps to be hot as bathwater is a curious fact. 

“If you’re ready,” you offer, and Harry winks at you and slips under the water. 

You’re nervous at first when he stays under too long, until you realize he can breathe underwater now. You see dark crimson and scales with a shining band of gold under the water, and when Harry peeks his tail up over the surface you gasp.

He rises up fully and floats on his back, showing you all of his, the long, shining tail and the way the gillering scale fade into the pale skin of his chest. He looks at you, a touch of nervousness in his expression at first before he must see something about how you are looking at _him_ that he likes, and he smiles.

“Join me,” he says, and you walk closer to the edge before you even realize you’re obeying him.

Was that mermaids, or sirens that directed sailors to jump from their ships to their deaths? You’re pretty sure it was sirens, but you are so captivated by Harry, the most beautiful creature in the world, that you’re sure you’d follow him into the depths if only he asked.

“Join you?” you confirm breathlessly. 

“I want to know if I sing any better underwater,” he says and you’ve stripped down to your pants and jumped in the large tub before you can determine whether or not that was a precisely good idea.

Underwater Harry looks even better, and he’s right, his singing voice is effortlessly beautiful now. He pulls you in, and suddenly you’re kissing him, again and again until he, at least, remembers you need to breathe. You gasp after surfacing but as soon as you have enough oxygen you go right back to kissing.

“You do still need to breathe,” Harry points out with a grin, pulling back but looking mightily pleased by your reaction to him. “As much as I’d love to snog you senseless underwater, you are a bit too human for it.”

“I can find some gillyweed,” you say suddenly, your oxygen starved brain providing an excellent solution.

“Hmm...next time,” he says, a coquettish glint in his eyes. “For now, though, we can take advantage of my new abilities in another way.” He slinks his tail around you, the fins tickling the skin of your back. It is an interesting sensation, both foreign and strangely erotic. 

He repositions you closer to the edge, seated on the bench and in one smooth motion pulls down your pants while stroking his other hand down over your chest, capturing your lips in another kiss. 

He sinks down below the surface of the water and the next thing you feel is his mouth around your hardening cock.  
Oh, this, _this_ is definitely a major benefit to Harry’s new abilities. He takes his time, taking you in fully, pesky things like needing air aren’t going to be a problem for him.

You groan, tangling your fingers into his messy curls and bask in the sensations, floating in warm water, while your gorgeous, merman lover continues his pleasant assault on your aching cock. He draws it out as much as he can and you hold on to the best of your ability, wanting the moment to last forever before crashing over the edge, vision going white with pleasure. 

Oh, this is a very good life indeed.

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	33. Go swimming

“Well, Mr. Potter,” I believe the first thing you need to do is go swimming.

“You think so,” Harry asks with a frown. “I don’t even really know anything about my...heritage.”

“You are technically a creature now, Potter. As in, you are not entirely human.” He starts to argue, looking a bit hurt, but you hold up a hand and shake your head. “I don’t mean it as an insult. Simply that you have creature instincts that will serve you better than simply reading things out of a book.”

“Oh, Professor, are you advising me _against_ reading and research?” he says cheekily, and you huff in annoyance.

“Do you want to go to the library, or do you want to go in the sea?”

He perks up immediately at the thought. “The sea, please.”

You meet him after lunch just outside of Hogwarts grounds, after having prepared a Portkey to a desolate stretch of beach on the coast. You’re dressed warmly, and pull your coat even closer around you after you arrive, the biting wind whipping through the air. The sea doesn’t look particularly inviting today, although at least there’s no storm on the horizon. 

Harry, however, is captivated. 

He doesn’t seem to feel the cold at all, and you suppose it makes sense. Him being a merperson of British descent should give him a high tolerance for cold water. He walks out into the surf and slips beneath the waves. 

You’re concerned at first when he doesn’t come up, until you remember he can breathe under water now. A flash of red and gold peaks above the waves, Harry’s tail, and then his head comes up to. You can see his grin from all the way over here.

“Snape! Look!” he shouts and his giddiness is contagious. It looks lovely on him, the deep crimson and shining gold scales look brilliant against the dark blue of the water and something inside you shifts. 

You let Harry swim for a while, renewing your warming charms several times over until finally beckoning him in. He reluctantly swims back towards the shore, shifting form as he walks out of the surf and you avert your eyes to protect his modesty. He dries and dresses quickly and then pulls you into an unexpected hug, whooping with joy. 

You sink into the hug without thinking, unconsciously reacting to his cold skin by tugging him closer, pulling him tighter against your warmth. Harry makes no move to protest, and so you keep him there as long as he’ll let you.

“Thank you,” he says, “for taking me here.”

Before you can reply, he’s kissing you, and you sink into that too. His mouth, at least, is warm, and the sweetness of the kiss overpowers your better reasoning. You decide not to think too hard about how much you want this, why it feels so right. 

‘“I should move closer to the ocean,” he says, and you nod in agreement.

“Yes, that would make sense,” you say. “I’ve always wanted to live by the sea, myself,” you add, for no particular reason at all. 

Harry smiles. “You’d make a good lighthouse keeper,” he smiles, and it’s so bizarre you actually laugh.

“You think so?”

He just hums an affirmative and settles his head against your shoulder. “Isn’t that a romantic pair, you think? The merman and the lighthouse keeper?”

Well, the boy makes a pretty good point, you think.

That sounds like it would be quite the life.  
THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	34. Go ahead with the ritual

No, you’re pretty confident. You think you’ve got this, so there’s really no need to get an outside perspective on this. 

You call Harry into your office one day, when you’ve prepared everything you need to. It’s the night before the full moon, and he’s already looking like he wants to jump out of his skin. 

Technically speaking, the office is not supposed to be your office, it should belong to the Potions professor. But if you’re living at Hogwarts you certainly aren’t going to give up your nice office, so the new Potions Mistress has been relocated.

But never mind that. What’s important is figuring out a way to explain this bizarre ritual to Potter.

“I think I have a way to help you,” you start, and Potter’s eyebrows raise up in surprise.

“How?”

You explain how you came by the knowledge, and why you think the ritual you found will cure him. You impress upon him the potential risks, and the sense that this is by no means a guarantee, but you can tell he’s inclined to trust you. 

You go over the particulars, the potions, the incantations, even the setting. And then you get to the awkward part. 

“The ritual itself is sex magic,” you say, as cliniacally as you possibly can. 

“Sex magic, sir?” Harry asks after a long silence.

“Indeed,” you reply, as if this was a normal sort of conversation. “Trust me, I can understand your...reluctance, but I really do think this is going to work to break your curse. You’ll be fully human again, not transforming against your will into a creature once a month. Don’t you want to be yourself again?”

Harry chews his bottom lip and considers. “What exactly do we need to...do.?”

You cough awkwardly. “As you are the one infected, you’ll be the...penetrative party. You’ll need to orgasm, and I’ll say the incantation when you do. The potions we take before hand will ensure ease of penetration on my part, and enough arousal for you.

“But what about you?” he asks.

“I say the incantation.”

“No, I mean, don’t you, err, get off as well?”

“That isn’t necessary.”

He rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be _necessary_. If we’re going to have sex, I want you to enjoy it too.”

This conversation has taken a weird turn, so you decide to jump ahead to asking for his consent.

“So, are you willing to participate?”

“Do you really think this will cure me?”

“I do,” you reply. “I promise you, I have checked and double checked, and I am as confident as I can be.

“Alright,” he says, after a sharp nod. “Let’s do it.”

You relocate to a clearing in the forest, already warded heavily for protection and privacy, and set up the enchanted objects in a design around the two of you. You set black candles to float in an outer circle. Between those and the moonlight, it’s light enough to see one another clearly. 

He downs his potion in one gulp, and you do the same. You feel relaxed and calm. You have lubricant as well, but you don’t expect the actual act to last very long, and you can put up with the discomfort.

You say the opening incantation, and nod at Harry to start. The potion has affected him, you can tell, he’s flushed and his eyes are bright. But instead of just mounting you and getting it over with, he leans in to kiss you, stroking his hand through your hair with a tenderness you certainly didn’t plan for. 

It looks like he _is_ planning to make this pleasurable for you as well. 

Well, if he insists.  
The air is chilly, but Harry is warm, and attentive, and before long you realize your potion must have an aphrodisiac component as well, since you’ve dissolved into pleasured moans after Harry starts touching you _there_ , one hand on your cock, the other circling your entrance, with lubricated fingertips, stretching you and twisting until you feel a burst of pleasure from deep inside. 

“Harry, now,” you grunt, because you can’t take it anymore, you’e ready for him to just fuck you already. 

And then he is, and it’s a pleasant stretch, an excruciatingly wonderful burn and his hand is back on your cock, stroking you until you can’t think…

“I’m coming,” he announces with a grown, and you try to piece the incantation together in your frazzled mind, shouting it out until your own orgasm overtakes you. 

You both lie back on the grass, exhausted and panting and then something strange happens. You start to shudder, fold in on yourself and then everything looks...different, in a way you can’t quite place. 

There’s a hissing coming from beside you and after a moment the sibilance becomes understandable words. 

“What did you do?” comes from the figure beside you, a red scaled snake.

“Harry?” you say after a moment, recognition dawning on you. Although you don't quite say it, more like hiss it, because it takes only one panicked moment to realize you’ve become a snake as well.

Well, you certainly fucked that up, didn’t you?

After some back and forth shouting, er, _hissing_ , you make your way back to the castle and locate Harry’s friends. They already recognize him, and eventually figure out who you are. They try to change you back, but to no avail. Then they call in other professors, then professionals, and it looks like _no one_ can change you back. 

Perfect. You’re both snakes. Permanently, unless someone manages to figure out a miracle cure.

Harry’s mad at you at first, understandably, but after a while he comes around. You can speak to each other in Parseltongue at least, which is nice. And Hogwarts has plenty of tasty mice, and students to frighten when the mood strikes you. You become the Slytherin House mascot, with a nice warm habitat in the common room. Harry has a spot there too, if he wants it, and he comes around to visit with you.   
It’s honestly almost fun, being a snake. Certainly easier than it was being a man. 

It’s not a bad life, you decide. Not bad at all.

THE END


	35. Talk to his friends

Maybe it isn’t the worst idea to get a second opinion. 

You know who knows Harry the best, Granger and Weasley, so you call them down into your office and decide to interrogate them about how Potter is holding up.

Well, maybe not “interrogate” precisely. You can be friendly.

“Biscuit?” you offer politely when they seat themselves in front of your desk. Weasley looks at you like you’ve grown an extra head and Granger just stares a moment before saying, “No thank you, Professor,” so you decide to dive right in.

“I want to know about Potter,” you say. “Particularly, how he’s handling his new condition.”

“He’s handling it fine,” Weasley says defensively. “You think he can defeat Voldemort and not be able to handle being a snake?”

The redhead’s loyalty is admirable, but you push on. “He seems depressed,” you add, focusing on Granger this time, the most sensible of the three. 

“I do think he’s a bit...lonely, Professor, that’s all,” she says after taking a moment to consider. “Honestly, I don’t even think he minds being a snake, not really. He just doesn’t like feeling different. Feeling like a _freak_ ,” he says. 

“Do you think you can cure him?” Weasley says. 

You open your mouth to answer, then close it. They’ve given you an idea. As much as you can’t stand James Potter and his friends, you found out later about their animagus abilities and their ill conceived tromps through the forest with the werewolf.

“I’ve heard of those with similar afflictions being joined by their peers in their animagus forms,” you say. “Why haven’t you tried that?”

“We have, but--” Weasley is interrupted by a swift kick from Granger. “I mean, uh, I am of course not an animagus, as I am not registered as one. But if I were, it might not be a, uh, complementary companion.”

“I am a registered animagus,” Granger says. “That was the first thing I tried. But I’m an owl, and although I would never, ever, hurt Harry, it can be...difficult to fight the owl mindset all day and night. And not want to carry him off in my talons.”

Well, Granger is terrifying. Good to know. You dismiss them both and lean back in your chair. 

You are not an animagus. The potion is of course well within your skills as a brewer, the magic itself not terribly complicated. But you never wanted to give the Dark Lord another tool at his disposal, so you hadn’t done it. Not yet.

You know you can’t really control what your form will be, but come on. It has to be a snake. You’re a Slytherin through and through, you love snakes, actually, at least when they aren’t trying to rip out your throat. It’s worth a shot, anyway. If you’re a snake, you can present yourself to Harry as a companion for one night a month, and keep tabs on him. Help him work through whatever he’s working through, and then once he’s fine again, you can part ways. It’s the least you can do. He did save your life, after all, and free the whole world from the Dark Lord.

A month later, just before the next full moon, the spell is complete and you take your new form. A thin, black snake. Just as you expected. Exactly what you’ve been focusing on the past month, hoping to influence the magic.

Harry’s in snake form, curled up sadly in his dorm when you come to find him. He has a private room this year, so at least you don’t have to deal with explaining yourself to the dormmates. He tilts his head up at you and hisses, likely inquiring what you’re doing there.

“Wouldn’t you rather be outside?” you ask. “It’s a lovely night.”

He shakes his head and curls back up on the bed. 

You shift form, then ask again in Parseltongue. 

“Sir?!” Potter exclaims, slithering down onto the floor. “What happened?”

“I’m an animagus,” you answer. “And I’m sick of seeing you moping about. So it falls to me to keep an eye on you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he hisses.

“It’s new,” you hiss back, and Harry gives you another odd tilt to his head. You think if snakes could smile, he might be smiling. 

“You did it for me,” he says. “Thank you, sir.”

He coils around you for a quick moment in what you suppose is the snake approximation of a hug. 

Together, you slither out of the room, make your way through the castle and out to the grassy area. You keep as far away from the Owlery as possible. 

Harry is quiet, that first night. Together you hunt mice, slither through the grass, but mostly just lie out together under the moonlight. You spend the entirety of Harry’s transformation with him, and when he’s human again, he comes to find you.

“Why did you do that for me,” he asks.

“Your friends said you didn’t mind the being a snake part. You only minded that you were lonely. I thought it might help. Having someone to be different with.”

“It did,” Harry says softly. “It helps a lot.”

His face cracks into a grin. “Same time next month, okay?” 

You smile back. “It’s a date.”

THE END

For a peek into your future, find an epilogue in Chapter 36


	36. Epilogue

Many years later, you wake up one Sunday morning from a very restful sleep. The pillow beneath your head is soft and the body curled against you is pleasantly warm. You aren't even bothered by the fact that a mess of black hair is currently tickling your nose; instead, you shift against your lover and cuddle him closer, press your face against that inky mop and inhale his scent.

Harry makes a happy sort of hum at the sensation of your arms around him, and presses his body closer against yours. Despite the noise and movement, you know he isn't quite awake yet. He likes to wake up slow on the weekend, and you are more than happy to lie in your warm, soft bed and hold each other until he wakes up properly, and you either have a long lazy shag, or are treated to an excellent and indulgent breakfast. Honestly, you probably have both to look forward to, you think with a smile, gazing down at the love of your life's gorgeous face.

Relationships aren't ever perfect, especially ones that started out as tumultuously as you and Harry's, but you are so happy in the life you have, and in the choices you've made. 

You think back, so many years ago, to the first day of this life, when you woke up in St. Mungo's after the battle. If you could do it all over again, would you make a different choice? Or maybe a different choice later down the line? 

It doesn't matter, you decide. You and Harry are meant to be. You have a very strong suspicion that any number of different choices would have led you right here, right now--warm, and safe, and loved. 

You're glad your particular set of choices brought you to this point, because it is exactly where you belong. 

The body beside you stirs and sleepy green eyes crinkle at the sides in a smile. "Hey, love," Harry says softly.

"Good morning," you reply, because it really, truly, is.


End file.
